Faster,Cheaper,Bigger
The 2016 Tech 50

The top financial technologists leverage cloud innovations andagile software techniques to accomplish more, on a larger scale,than ever before.

TECHNOLOGISTS IN THE BUSI-

ness world set performancegoals that may push theirskills to the limit, but the benchmarks
are simply stated: better, faster andcheaper. Those who excel in thefinancial services industry — including the executives, innovators andentrepreneurs spotlighted in Institutional Investor’s Tech 50 — are betterand faster than ever before. They areapplying advanced technologies thatallow them to accomplish more withinbudget than ever before and are doing
so on a large, often global, scale thathas become imperative but was not
feasible until recently.
Financial firms are dealing withnew regulations, costs and capitalpressures, and facing ever-evolving

competitive challenges from bothfamiliar peers and disruptive fintech
upstarts. Yet the asset managers,banks, exchanges and other entities
represented in the Tech 50 are not in
retreat when it comes to information
technology and innovation. Pushing
forward is an operational and strategicnecessity, and no less so for compliance and cybersecurity.
There are common themes up anddown this 16th annual ranking: agility
in software and product development;
mobility to accommodate activities
increasingly untethered from the traditional desktop; and cloud computing
for its ubiquitous availability andimmense scalability.
And there are blockchain reactions.
Virtually everybody has one, starting at

Long-Term Plan
Top management’s goal is“the digitizationof BofA,” Catherine Bessant says.

the top with Bank of America Corp. chief
operations and technology officer Catherine Bessant. The second woman to be
ranked No. 1 (following then–JPMorgan
Chase & Co. international president
Heidi Miller, in 2010), Bessant sees inthe distributed ledger “the power toproduce tremendous amounts of innovation.” Given that “the execution of acommercial application has not been atscale,” she says, blockchain remains “agreat technology with a lot of potential.”
If anyone can speak to scale, it is Bessant, who has a tech budget of $17 billionand 110,000 employees and contractors
worldwide. An indication of BofA’s
innovative edge is its industry-leading
259 patents last year.
Success at scale is also evident in thecontinuously improving top and bottom lines of Intercontinental Exchange
and CME Group, led, respectively, bycareer technologists Jeffrey Sprecher(No. 2) and Phupinder Gill (No. 4).
The Tech 50 ranking was compiled
by Institutional Investor editors andstaff, with nominations and input fromindustry participants and experts.
Four primary sets of attributes wereevaluated: achievements and contributions over the course of a career; scopeand complexity of responsibilities;
influence and leadership inside andoutside the organization; and puretechnological innovation. 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, 37 return fromlast year. The returnees’ 2015 ranks
are shown, and the rest are designated“PNR” (previously not ranked).

•The Tech 50 was compiled under thedirection of Senior Contributing Editor
Jeffrey Kutler. Individual profiles werewritten by Kutler; Asia Bureau Chief
Allen T. Cheng; Senior Writers Frances
Denmark and Julie Segal; Research Staff
Writer Jess Delaney; Content Editor
Anne Szustek; Associate Editor Kaitlin
Ugolik; Assistant Editor Jennifer
Werner; and Editor Michael Peltz.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL RYDING

THE 2016 TECH 50: NEIL KATZThe D.E. Shaw managing director jumps
to No. 19 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

19

NEIL KATZManaging Director
D.E. SHAW & CO.
LAST YEAR: 20
Neil Katz took his first programming class at the age of ten and has loved
playing with computers ever since. Today, as managing director of D.E.
Shaw & Co., overseeing more than 250 technologists at the $37 billion
alternative-investment firm, Katz indulges his fondness for hacking on
Friday evenings. “I’ll find a little piece of our software that has a rough edge
to it, and I’ll polish that edge because writing code remains one of my great
pleasures,” the 44-year-old says. “As we’ve replaced our older technology
with newer, more efficient software, we’ve saved time and generated
happiness among the team,” he adds. To that end, D.E. Shaw’s developers
are embedded alongside the quantitative researchers in the multistrategy
firm’s various investment units rather than working as part of a central
information technology group. “We get huge benefits from that,” says
Katz, who joined New York–based D.E. Shaw in 1994 after graduatingfrom Stanford University with a BS in electrical engineering and a BA inquantitative economics. During the past year Katz’s developers have beenworking on ways to process enormous amounts of data chronologicallyafter it has been collected. “We’ve been developing systems to allow us
to process this chronological data at scale, which has allowed us to go
beyond standard modeling to explore the data for patterns,” he explains.
Although D.E. Shaw historically has avoided cloud computing because
it can do things more cheaply using its own data centers and proprietary
technology, Katz says the firm is starting to look at how it could transform
its systems to efficiently use cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services
as they come down in price: “The idea is to get this to the point where if ourquants want to use 100,000 machines right now to deal with a data set thatis astronomically large, they can do that and it will be an advantage.”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*
RANK NAME

TITLE

FIRM

11 Stephen NeffEnterprise CTO

Fidelity Investments

12 David Craig

President, Financial& RiskThomson Reuters

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 Blythe Masters

CEODigital Asset Holdings

18 David Rutter

CEOR3CEV

19 Neil Katz

Managing Director

D.E. Shaw & Co.

20 Lee OleskyCEOTradeweb Markets

21 Richard McVey

Chairman and CEO

MarketAxess Holdings

22 Seth Merrin

CEOLiquidnet Holdings

23 Robert Alexander CIO

Capital One
Financial Corp.

24 Brad Katsuyama

IEX GroupCEO

25 Antoine Shagoury Global CIO

State Street Corp.

26 David Gledhill

Head of Group
Technology andOperations

DBS Bank

TMX Group

27 Lou EcclestonCEO

28 Andreas Preuss

Deputy CEO

Deutsche Börse

29 Dan Schulman

President and CEO

PayPal Holdings

30 Scott Dillon

CTO

Wells Fargo & Co.

31 Mike Chinn

President

S&P Global MarketIntelligence

32 Craig Donohue

Executive Chairman

Options Clearing Corp.

33 Gary NorcrossPresident and CEO

Fidelity National
Information Services

34 Steven O’Hanlon

President and CEO

Numerix

35 Sebastián Ceria

CEOAxioma

36 Michael Cooper

CTO

BT Radianz

37 Tyler Kim

Global Headof Fund Services

MaplesFS

38 Neal Pawar

CTO

AQR CapitalManagement

39 David HardingCEO

Winton CapitalManagement

40 Chris Corrado

COO

London Stock
Exchange Group

41 Brian Conlon

CEOFirst Derivatives

42 Jim Minnick

CEOeVestment

43 Stephane Dubois

CEOXignite

44 Mazy Dar

CEOOpenFin

45 Yasuki Okai

President

NRI Holdings America

46 Kim Fournais

CEOSaxo Bank

47 Jock Percy

CEOPerseus

48 Robert SchifellitePresident, Investor
Communication
Solutions

Broadridge FinancialSolutions

49 Brian Sentance

CEOXenomorph Software

50 Pieter van der Does President and CEO*Go to iim.ag/tech50 for full profiles.

Posted from the July/August 2016 issue of Institutional Investor Magazine. Copyright 2016 by Institutional Investor Magazine. All rights reserved.
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