The 2015 Fintech Finance 35: Thomas Jessop, Goldman Sachs Group

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< The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

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Thomas Jessop
Managing Director, Principal Strategic Investments Group
Goldman Sachs Group

“We were the original fintech investors,” says Thomas Jessop, managing director of principal strategic investments at Goldman Sachs Group. He draws a distinction between “classic fintech,” which has driven innovations in trading and market structure since the turn of the century, and “new fintech,” which seems capable of disrupting any and all parts of the financial industry. Goldman ruled classic fintech as a leading investor and behind-the-scenes influencer in joint ventures like Tradeweb Markets in fixed income; the Direct Edge exchange, now part of BATS Global Markets; and financial data company Markit, which went public in 2014. With new fintech, Jessop says, “the basic issue is still the same: How do we make the entire stack across finance more efficient?” New York–based Goldman targets technologies that can benefit the firm. Current holdings include cryptocurrency-wallet company Circle Internet Financial; Digital Reasoning, which is commercializing advanced data analytics initially developed for the intelligence community; and Symphony Communication Services, a messaging start-up widely regarded as the strongest challenger yet to the dominance of the Bloomberg terminal. Jessop, who is 49 and has been in the principal strategic investments group for ten of his 15 years with Goldman, says that although traditional venture capital funding is plentiful, “it can be very helpful to have someone from finance” — a prospective user of the technology who understands the industry’s structural and regulatory complexity — as part of the ownership team. He sees some promise in blockchain technology but finds the chest-thumping by some new players to be a distraction. “People who try to work with existing institutions to make the blockchain work are far more credible than those who stand outside the fortress and say they’re going to knock it down,” he asserts.

The 2015 Fintech Finance 35