< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow

In 1999 the online finance boom was in full swing, concentrated in the U.S., when Oki Matsumoto decided to push Japan onto that bandwagon. He left behind a bright future as a Goldman Sachs Japan investment banker and with an initial capital infusion from Sony Corp. launched Monex Group. Now one of Japan’s premier financial services brands, with 1.2 million individual customers, an array of investment banking and asset management services, and an increasingly international flavor, Monex is pursuing a strategy of “globalizing its customer base,” says chairman and CEO Matsumoto. The firm is leaning on TradeStation Group, a Plantation, Florida–based brokerage operation it acquired in 2011, as both a revenue and technology engine. Sagging trading volumes amid low volatility drove Monex Group’s overall net profits down in the six months ended September 30, to ¥1.9 billion ($17 million) on ¥14 billion in revenue from ¥5.28 billion on ¥20.7 billion in revenue a year earlier. The 51-year-old Matsumoto does not break out the U.S. results but says TradeStation is a plus. And not just financially: South Korea’s Shinhan Investment Corp. licensed the TradeStation 9.5 technology platform in November 2013, and China’s Guosen Securities Co. followed suit in September 2014. Matsumoto’s goals for 2015: “More expansion of B2B businesses all over the world, particularly in the U.S., and acquisition of customers in mainland China.”

 
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