< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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25
Frank Bisignano
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
First Data Corp.
PNR

As a youngster in Brooklyn, New York, Frank Bisignano worked at a cheese store in the Kings Plaza shopping mall. “It’s where I learned everything I know about business,” he quips. Over more than two decades in and around Wall Street, Bisignano made his reputation as a hard-nosed operations and turnaround specialist. At Citigroup, where he had worked since 1994, he became CEO of the Global Transaction Services business in 2002 and by 2005 had turned a $400 million loss into a profit exceeding $1 billion. While Bisignano was CEO of mortgage banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he was also co-COO, the business earned $3.3 billion in 2012 after losing $2.1 billion the year before. “I’ve always looked at adversity as opportunity,” says the 55-year-old as he repeats the pattern most impressively at payment processor First Data Corp., where he was named CEO in April 2013 and chairman the following March. Since being taken private by KKR & Co. in a 2007 leveraged buyout, Atlanta-based First Data didn’t record a profit until what Bisignano terms “our historic fourth quarter” of 2014: $12 million on $2.9 billion in revenue. “Two years ago First Data was a no-growth company that could barely pay its debt load. We were fundamentally a processor of payments, essentially a utility,” Bisignano says. “Today we’re a broad technology and solutions company and a software enabler — and we’ve hit profitability.” Bisignano has filled out his senior team with JPMorgan alumni including ex-CIO Guy Chiarello, whose remit as First Data president includes innovation and product development. Bisignano has reached out to Silicon Valley, forming partnerships with the likes of Apple and Palantir Technologies and acquiring mobile gift-card platform Gyft. “We had to be prepared to cannibalize our existing base and bring in new products,” he says. “I was prepared to take the risk of cannibalization to be more relevant.”

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

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2. Catherine Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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3. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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4. Lance Uggla
Markit

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5. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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6. Shawn Edwards &
Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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7. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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8. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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9. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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10. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq OMX Group

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11. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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12. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Christopher Perretta
State Street Corp.

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18. Antoine Shagoury
London Stock Exchange Group

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19. Kevin Rhein
Wells Fargo & Co.

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20. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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21. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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22. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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23. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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24. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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25. Frank Bisignano
First Data Corp.

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26. John Marcante
Vanguard Group

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27. Joseph Squeri
Citadel

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28. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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29. Claude Honegger
Credit Suisse

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30. Chris Corrado
MSCI

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31. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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32. John Bates
Software AG

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33. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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34. Gary Scholten
Principal Financial Group

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35. Sunil Hirani
trueEX Group

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36. Hauke Stars
Deutsche BÖrse

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37. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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38. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais

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40. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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41. Jim McGuire
Charles Schwab Corp.

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42. Steven O'Hanlon
Numerix

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43. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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44. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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45. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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46. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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47. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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48. Mas Nakachi
OpenGamma

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49. John Lehner
BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group

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50. Jock Percy
Perseus