< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

In 2012 fixed-income technology innovator MarketAxess Holdings introduced Open Trading, an anonymous, all-to-all model designed to help address the credit markets’ liquidity challenges. Chairman and CEO Richard McVey admits he wasn’t sure back then how it would fly, and Open Trading had its share of outside skeptics. But it has turned out to be a major success driver across product classes for New York–based MarketAxess, which in the first quarter posted record revenue of $77 million, up 21 percent year-over-year, while boosting its share of U.S. high-grade bond trading to 15.6 percent from 13.4 percent. Open Trading, which is a single, inclusive pool for money managers, dealers, hedge funds and other market participants, accounted for 9 percent of MarketAxess activity in the first quarter, compared with 2 percent a year earlier. To put that in perspective, the largest dealer on MarketAxess has an 11 to 12 percent share. “We’re proving that all-to-all trading in corporate bonds works,” says McVey, 55, a former head of fixed-income sales at J.P. Morgan & Co. who has headed MarketAxess since it emerged from the bank’s LabMorgan incubator in 2000. “It’s a valuable new source of liquidity for investors and dealers,” McVey adds. April marked the second anniversary of an Open Trading alliance with BlackRock (see Robert Goldstein, No. 5), which early this year was extended to Europe. A pickup in volatility that began late last year “is driving investors and dealers to the MarketAxess platform,” McVey says. “They get busy, and they know they can move risk here.”

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Solana vs. Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: How Do They Compare? Sponsored by CME Group April 29, 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