< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

Bond markets have been through cyclical ups and downs since MarketAxess Holdings’ e-trading platform, led by former J.P. Morgan & Co. head of North American fixed-income sales Richard McVey, emerged from that bank’s LabMorgan incubator in 2000. McVey has maintained a steady hand throughout, as chairman and CEO from the beginning and over MarketAxess’ ten years as a publicly traded company, and his vision and patience are being vindicated: MarketAxess is posting record profits ($107 million pretax in 2013, up 20 percent, on $239 million in revenue) and volumes in its high-grade, high-yield and emerging-markets asset classes. “Our credibility reflects ongoing demand for electronic trading in credit,” says the 54-year-old, at a time of “reduced market-making capacity and liquidity in the secondary markets.” MarketAxess, which in the first quarter of 2014 claimed a 13.4 percent share of the U.S. high-grade market, is applying technology and creativity in what McVey terms “a strategy to embrace new ways of trading credit.” It includes an alliance with BlackRock and a set of “all to all” protocols, called Open Trading, that contrasts with the traditional dealer-to-client model. Last year MarketAxess bolstered its European and posttrade services presence with the £25.3 million ($38.5 million) acquisition of Xtrakter from Brussels-based Euroclear.

 
The 2014 Tech 50

1 Dave Cross	1	3 IAN CURCIO 2011	4 FayFoto/Boston	5 Teri Pengilley
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8 Photographer:Charlie Simokaitis	9	10 Mark McQueen
Robert Goldstein BlackRock	David Craig Thomson Reuters	Phupinder Gill CME Group	Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group	R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group
11	12	13	14	15 Christopher Elston
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18 Todd Plitt	19	20
Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets	Dominique Cerutti Euronext	Ron Levi GFI Group	Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group	Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
21 Larry Lettera/ Camera 1	22	23	24 XT	25
Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ	Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets	Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings	Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings	Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group
26 Production	27 Wayne R. Martin	28	29 Thorsten Jansen	30 Adam B. Auel
Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.	Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.	Peter Carr Morgan Stanley	Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse	Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.
31	32	33 Paul Elledge	34	35 Stephen Brashear
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39 Photo Credit: Kevin Irby	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42 Jeff Smith Photo	43	44	45
Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank	Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates	Tyler Kim MaplesFS	Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.	Jim Minnick eVestment
46	47	48 tomohisa ichiki	49 David Poultney	50 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma