The 2015 Tech 50: Michael Cooper

< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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Michael Cooper
Chief Technology Officer
BT Radianz
PNR

Cloud computing has been all the rage for five or six years; by now it is less a buzzword than a mainstream component of system architectures. However, the computing utility or shared infrastructure concept had earlier incarnations, one example being Radianz, a cloud in all but name when it began life 15 years ago as a Reuters Group affiliate. Acquired by the U.K.’s BT Group in 2005, what is now BT Radianz has bridged the pre- and postcloud eras to become a critical communications backbone for the financial industry and “more than just a service provider,” says Michael Cooper, CTO of the unit and of the financial technology services group within BT Global Banking and Financial Markets. Telecommunications is the core business of £17.9 billion-in-revenue ($27.3 billion) BT, but with thousands of financial market participants and more than 400 application and service providers on Radianz — a who’s who of brokerages, data companies, order and execution management systems and trading venues — the specialized network occupies a neutral ground that brings credibility to its dealings with clients. “We not only support their plans and strategies, we also can offer insight into where the market structure is going, how regulations are evolving and how people should respond to them,” explains Cooper, 52, who after joining the original Radianz team in 2001 headed up customer solutions, created a business technology group for BT Global Financial Services and became CTO in 2010. “Arguably, we take friction out of the market by virtue of our ubiquity.” Although cloud technology “lowers barriers to entry and achieving scale,” Cooper notes, there is a downside: The same benefits can be exploited by hackers. He cochairs one of the industry committees trying to stay a step ahead of such threats, the FIX Trading Community Cyber Security Working Group.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”

The 2015 Tech 50

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1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group 4. Lance Uggla Markit 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group

11. David Craig Thomson Reuters 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co.

21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp.

26. John Marcante Vanguard Group 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse 30. Chris Corrado MSCI

31. David Gledhill DBS Bank 32. John Bates Software AG 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group

36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 38. Jim Minnick eVestment 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS

41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. 42. Steven O’Hanlon Numerix 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite

46. Mazy Dar OpenFin 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group 50. Jock Percy Perseus