< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow

GFI Group has gotten caught up in a takeover battle. A $580 million deal with Chicago’s CME Group, announced on July 30 and scheduled for completion in early 2015, was countered by a hostile bid from BGC Partners, one of New York–based GFI’s interdealer brokerage rivals. From the point of view of GFI chief technology officer Jerry Dobner, however, those machinations “aren’t changing anything. We are forging ahead. You can see it reflected in our numbers: In some businesses electronic revenues are up to 50 percent,” equaling or overtaking traditional voice brokerage. That is and will remain the bottom line for Dobner, who with an information technology staff of 270 maintains a long-running — and somewhat contrarian — commitment to in-house system development. CME was mainly attracted to Trayport, GFI’s European energy-trading system; the rest of the GFI wholesale brokerage would be sold back to a management group including executive chairman Michael Gooch. “The focus from senior management on the importance of electronic trading is a key to our success,” says Dobner, 44, who joined GFI in 2001 after developing real-time stock-quote software for the NewsAlert site. They invested last year in what Dobner terms “a complete, floor-to-ceiling revamping of our physical computing infrastructure,” coinciding with a move into the Equinix NY4 data center in New Jersey that puts GFI in close proximity to key trading venues.

See also Dobner's profiles in the 2013 Trading Technology 40 and the 2012 Trading Technology 30.

 
The 2015 Trading Technology 40

1	2	3	4	5
Kevin Kometer CME Group	Richard Prager BlackRock	Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg Tradebook	Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings	Charles Vice Intercontinental Exchange
6	7 Zef Nikolla	8	9	10
Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets	Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group	Brad Levy MarkitSERV	Dan Keegan Citi	Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional
11 Mark McQueen	12	13	14	15 Margaret Fox
Gerard Beatty Goldman Sachs Group	Gerald O'Connell CBOE Holdings	Brenda Hoffman TMX Group	Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets	Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings
16	17	18 Martin H. Simon	19 Todd Plitt	20 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Gil Mandelzis EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP)	Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority	Jerry Dobner GFI Group	Michael Liberman BlueMountain Capital Management
21	22 Photographer:http://www.digitalh	23	24 Dennis Degnan	25 Paul Elledge
Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing	Jamie Selway Investment Technology Group	Brad Katsuyama IEX Group	John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT	Jamil Nazarali Citadel Execution Services
26	27	28 Picasa	29 Andrew Harrer	30 Takashi KATO
Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange	Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy Broadway Technology	Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings	Manoj Narang Tradeworx, Thesys Technologies	Oki Matsumoto Monex Group
31	32 unknown	33 Douglas Kurn	34 Luludi/LUZ	35 William Neumann Photography
Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange	Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology	Stu Taylor Algomi	Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado BM&FBovespa	Tal Cohen Chi-X Global Holdings
36	37	38	39	40
Donal Byrne Corvil	R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group	Alfred Eskandar Portware	Richard Korhammer SR Labs	Hazem Dawani OptionsCity Software