The 2015 Fintech Finance 35: P. Howard Edelstein, REDI Holdings

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< The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

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P. Howard Edelstein
Chairman
REDI Holdings

Thirty years in financial technology have neither dampened P. Howard Edelstein’s enthusiasm for the industry nor lessened the number of hats he wears in bringing new ideas to fruition. He has run businesses, engineered turnarounds and played key roles in negotiating and overseeing joint ventures like New York–based REDI Holdings, the former Goldman Sachs Group trading technology enterprise, of which he has been chairman since February 2014. Edelstein is also a director of research data company Alacra, which was acquired September 30 by compliance systems company Opus Global; lead independent director of AcadiaSoft, a collateral management market player whose 13-member ownership group he helped pull together; and strategic adviser to, and equity investor in, fixed-income trade information platform Algomi. All this after being CEO of multiple tech enterprises: Thomson Financial Electronic Services Group, a posttrade processing business that he merged in 2001 with Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. to form Omgeo; Radianz, a telecommunications cloud infrastructure that BT Group acquired from Reuters Group in 2005; trading technology company NYFIX, which NYSE Euronext bought in 2009; and BondDesk Group, which Tradeweb Markets took over in 2013. “People come to me for help,” Edelstein explains. “If I get excited about it, I stay,” whether as adviser, mentor, director or investor. He considers “learning machines” — advanced intelligence that AcadiaSoft and Algomi, among others, are working on — “the next frontier in fintech,” along with cybersecurity solutions based on analysis of behavioral patterns, now being pioneered by Israeli company BioCatch. And he hasn’t overlooked the highly touted blockchain, which he used when making a small investment in Pivit, a predictive gaming application. “You get an encrypted key with unique ownership information,” says Edelstein, who has an MS degree in electrical engineering and information sciences from Stanford University and will only admit to being in his late 50s. “It was like the first time I did a paperless trade or used e-mail.”

The 2015 Fintech Finance 35