< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

With 110,000 employees and contractors at her disposal in 34 countries, and a development budget last year of $3 billion, Catherine Bessant presides over one of the world’s biggest information technology organizations. It just happens to be within Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S.-based banking company, with $2.1 trillion in assets. (Other vital statistics: 48 million consumer and business relationships, 4,800 retail offices, 15,900 ATMs, 31 million active online customers and 17 million mobile users — and those are just domestic numbers.) So big is Bessant’s platform that her decisions can send ripples throughout the IT world. A case in point is a software-defined infrastructure initiative, essentially the creation of a private cloud, on which Charlotte, North Carolina–based BofA plans to run 80 percent of its workload by 2018. “Our strategic partners would say our drive for software-defined infrastructure is causing them to rethink their own models for delivery,” says Bessant, global technology and operations executive since 2010. (Her title was renamed chief operations and technology officer, effective July 22.) “That form of innovation really is driving sector change, given our scale,” adds the 33-year BofA veteran, whose past positions include president of global corporate banking, chief marketing officer and president of consumer real estate and community development banking. The 55-year-old doesn’t just do IT: She chairs the bank’s clean-energy-promoting Environmental Program and in March was paired with a professional ballet dancer in “Dancing with the Stars of Charlotte,” which raised $255,000 for the local ballet and the Buddy Kemp Cancer Support Center, named for a BofA executive who died of cancer. Bessant describes the current tech environment as “moving at the speed of the consumer, not the speed of the enterprise. I need to convene the best and brightest talent to solve the challenge of enterprises working one way and the market demanding a different speed.”

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Maximizing Impact: The Role of TAMP Selection in Effective Investment Distribution Sponsored by BlackRock April 14, 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