< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

Even the most jaded of commuters passing through New York’s Grand Central Terminal this spring couldn’t have missed the large robot, suspended in a glass box, pouring cups of coffee. It was a three-dimensional advertisement for Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, brokerage firm Charles Schwab’s robo-adviser. “The story was that if you have time for a cup of coffee, you have time to develop an investment plan,” says Jim McGuire, Charles Schwab Corp.’s 60-year-old chief information officer. Within two and a half months of its March 8 launch, the automated, customized program had opened more than 32,000 accounts holding more than $2 billion in customer assets. And it isn’t just robotic; human representatives are available when hands-on assistance is called for. A white-label version was launched in the second quarter, enabling members of the Schwab Advisor Services network to offer Intelligent Portfolios under their own brand names. Schwab is also seeing rapid growth in its compliance offerings to corporate clients coping with the ever-changing regulatory landscape. Companies using Schwab Compliance Solutions increased 62 percent over the past two years, to 2,185, while assets monitored rose 58 percent, to $60 billion. McGuire, who worked at Schwab from 1997 to 2004 and spent more than four years with eBay and its PayPal unit before returning to the San Francisco–based brokerage in 2009, says mobility is a strategic priority — Schwab has launched an Apple Watch application — and “You can’t say enough about data. There’s so much we can do with the data our clients entrust us with to serve them better.”

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Open Architecture and Next-Gen Technology Help Support Model Delivery Sponsored by BlackRock April 24, 2025 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