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The 2015 Tech 50

The global financial technology elite sets itself apart by understanding
the strategic and societal implications of high-tech advances andpushing innovation at Silicon Valley–like speed.

GROUNDED AS IT IS IN INFOR-

mation and money — andinformation about money— financial services is, was and always
will be a technology business. “Goodinformation received in a timely fashion” defined sound banking, the late
Citibank chairman Walter Wriston said
more than 30 years ago.
But money, banking and capital markets have come a long way from what
they were in Wriston’s time, or even ayear ago, because technology is advancing so quickly and changing industry
and society as it goes.
That is the day-to-day reality for theTech 50, the visionaries and innovators
on Institutional Investor’s annual rankingof financial technology leaders. What sets
these executives apart goes beyond theirconsiderable understanding of software

applications and system performance ascomponents of corporate strategy. These
leaders think big about the global or
macro implications of technology-drivenchange — from cloud computing andmachine learning to emerging sensations
like the Apple Watch, cryptocurrencies
and the Internet of Things. They relate
such developments to their organizations’ and customers’ on-the-groundchallenges and opportunities; set budget,
investment and R&D priorities; and comeup with solutions, to use the technological term of art.
And they put a premium on speedand agility. “It’s all about speed to innovate,” says Robert Alexander (No. 24),
chief information officer of Capital One
Financial Corp.
Intercontinental Exchange
chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher,repeating in the No. 1 position, broughthis company from nowhere to the topof the global exchange world in part
because, he says, “technology enabled
us to scale quickly.” It also can fail. ICE’s
three-and-a-half-hour outage on July 8
was only the latest to affect a major market platform — and demonstrate theimportance of two other differentiating
qualities: resiliency and recovery.
Catherine Bessant (No. 2), global
technology and operations executive
at Bank of America Corp., frets that thetechnology world at large is “moving at
the speed of the consumer, not the speedof the enterprise.” The answer? “The best
and brightest talent.” Bessant believes
that “in conjunction with advancedstate thinking, financial services is magnetic for tech people.” But that meanscompeting against Apple, Google andother name brands.
The Tech 50 ranking was compiled
by Institutional Investor editors andstaff, with nominations and input fromindustry participants and experts. Four
primary sets of attributes were evaluated: achievements and contributions
over the course of a career; scope andcomplexity of responsibilities; influenceand leadership inside and outside theorganization; and pure technologicalinnovation. The top ten appear in the following pages, and full profiles for all 50
can be viewed online at iim.ag/tech50.
Of the 50 entries, 36 return fromlast year. The returnees’ 2014 ranks
are shown, and the rest are designated“PNR” (previously not ranked).
The Tech 50 was compiled under the
direction of Senior Contributing Editor
Jeffrey Kutler. Individual profiles werewritten by Kutler; Asia Bureau Chief
Allen T. Cheng; Editorial Research
Assistant Jess Delaney; Senior Writers
Frances Denmark, Julie Segal and AaronTimms; Associate Editor Kaitlin Ugolik;
International Editor Tom Buerkle; andEditor Michael Peltz.

•THE 2015 TECH 50: NEIL KATZThe D.E. Shaw managing director debuts
at No. 20 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

20NEIL KATZManaging Director
D.E. SHAW & CO.
PNRWhen Neil Katz graduated from Stanford University in 1994 with a BS
in electrical engineering and a BA in quantitative economics, he had
every intention of going for a master’s in computer science and thenapplying to a Ph.D. program. Then he got a letter from D.E. Shaw & Co.
inviting him to New York for an interview. Katz didn’t know much about
the hedge fund firm, which had been founded by computer scientist
and Stanford alum David Shaw six years earlier, but he couldn’t passup a free trip to the Big Apple. “All these senior people met with me,
and I was really impressed because they were clearly very smart,” says
Katz, who learned to hack as a kid on an Atari 400 home computer. “As adouble major I was interested in both finance and technology, and thiswas a firm that was at the intersection of both, so that was attractive tome.” Katz joined the then-$350 million-in-assets D.E. Shaw as a juniorprogrammer and operations person in its U.S. equities trading group.
Two decades later, at 43, he is still with the firm — which now manages$36 billion in alternative and long-only investment strategies — andoversees the hardware and software at the heart of its trading systems andinformation technology infrastructure. A key to D.E. Shaw’s success is
its culture, which emphasizes creativity and values the contributions oftechnologists, quants and traders alike, Katz says. By working closely with
the investment staff, Katz’s team of more than 250 technologists focuses
on “building transformative tools” that enable the firm’s researchers totest their investment ideas and trading algorithms using the trillion data
events that D.E. Shaw collects daily. “Our commitment to building thesetools — which have transformed the way we provide, process and visualize
large volumes of data — means that our researchers have been able to run
experiments more quickly and get forecasts into production faster thanever,” he adds.
This document is provided for your information only and does not constitute investment
advice or convey an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or otherfinancial products. Furthermore, the D. E. Shaw group does not endorse any information,
beliefs, and/or opinions discussed in the document and makes no representation as totheir accuracy or adequacy. Please note also the date of the document, as the information
contained in it has not been updated for any information that may have changed. No
assurances can be given that any aims, assumptions, expectations, and/or goals describedin the document will be realized.

THE BEST OF THE REST: NOS. 11-50*
NAME

TITLE

FIRM

David Craig

President,
Financial and Risk

Thomson Reuters

12 Daniel Coleman

CEOKCG Holdings

13 Michael Spencer

CEOICAP

14 Michael Bodson

President and CEO

Depository Trust &Clearing Corp.

15 Charles Li

CEOHong Kong Exchanges
and Clearing

16 Chris Concannon

President and CEO

BATS Global Markets

17 Christopher
Perretta

CIO

State Street Corp.

18 Antoine Shagoury

COO

London Stock
Exchange Group

19 Kevin Rhein

CIO

Wells Fargo & Co.

20 Neil Katz

Managing Director

D.E. Shaw & Co.

21 Lee Olesky

CEOTradeweb Markets

22 Richard McVey

Chairman and CEOMarketAxess Holdings

23 Seth Merrin

CEOLiquidnet Holdings

24 Robert Alexander

CIO

Capital One
Financial Corp.

25 Frank Bisignano

Chairman and CEOFirst Data Corp.

26 John MarcanteHead, Information
Technology Division

Vanguard Group

27 Joseph Squeri

CIO

Citadel28 Lou Eccleston

CEO

TMX Group

29 Claude Honegger

Co-CIO

Credit Suisse

30 Chris Corrado

CIO

MSCI

31 David Gledhill

Head, Group
Technology andOperations

DBS Bank

32 John Bates

Chief Marketing Officer Software AG

33 Michael Cooper

CTO

BT Radianz

34 Gary Scholten

CIO

Principal FinancialGroup35 Sunil Hirani

CEOtrueEX Group36 Hauke Stars

Head, Information
Technology, MarketData and Services

Deutsche Börse

37 Brian Conlon

CEOFirst Derivatives

38 Jim Minnick

CEOeVestment

39 Lars Seier
Christensen &Kim Fournais

Co-CEOs

Saxo Bank

MaplesFS

1140 Tyler Kim

CIO

41 Jim McGuireCIOCharles Schwab Corp.

42 Steven O’Hanlon

President and CEO

Numerix

43 Sebastián Ceria

CEOAxioma

44 Yasuki Okai

President

NRI Holdings America

45 Stephane Dubois

CEOXignite

46 Mazy Dar

CEOOpenFin

47 Brian SentanceCEO

Xenomorph Software

48 Mas Nakachi

CEOOpenGamma

49 John Lehner

CEO

BNY Mellon TechnologySolutions Group

50 Jock Percy

CEOPerseus*Go to iim.ag/tech50 for full profiles.

Reprinted from the July/August 2015 issue of Institutional Investor Magazine. Copyright 2015 by Institutional Investor Magazine. All rights reserved.
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