< Wall Street's Nerds: The World's Most Powerful Trading Executives

40. Oki Matsumoto
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Monex Group
PNR

A dot-com-era online brokerage start-up, founded in 1999 by former Goldman Sachs Group partner Oki Matsumoto, Tokyo-based Monex Group remains, at its core, a retail securities company. Its three principal brands are Monex in Japan, which over the past two years increased its customer accounts to 1.7 million from 1.2 million; TradeStation, a 2011 acquisition in the U.S., where technology development is centered and about half of Monex's 857 employees are based; and Boom, anchoring the Asia–Pacific strategy of Hong Kong–based Monex International. However, Monex has diversified beyond brokerage, with asset management, M&A advisory, and program trading businesses as well as Monex Ventures, a corporate venture capital unit.

Because of a decline in trading volume, operating revenue in Japan from April through December, the first three quarters of Monex's 2017 fiscal year, fell 21.5 percent from the 2015 period, to ¥19.4 billion ($174 million), while U.S. revenue was flat at $106 million. Completed systems investments in what Monex calls a "new backbone" are expected to yield cost reductions of ¥150 million per month in the next fiscal year. "Our market information system is mission-critical, and it is running in the cloud, which allows us not only to lower costs but also to offer various services we couldn't do before," Matsumoto, 53, comments. "Without innovation, there is no future in our business."

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq The Rise of Oil Options: Why More Traders Are Getting Involved Sponsored by CME Group May 19, 2025 4. Brad Levy MarkitSERV 5. Dan Keegan Citi

6. Glenn Lesko Bloomberg Tradebook 7. Bryan Durkin CME Group 8. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange 9. Mike Blum KCG Holdings 10. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group

11. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional 12. Nick Themelis MarketAxess Holdings 13. Jenny Knott NEX Optimisation 14. Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets 15. Rob Park IEX Group

16. Bill Chow & Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 17. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT 18. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities 19. Eric Noll Convergex 20. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology

21. Tyler Moeller & Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology 22. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange 23. Gaurav Suri Arcesium 24. Manoj Narang Mana Partners 25. Michael Chin & Neill Penney Thomson Reuters

26. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 27. Anton Katz & Stephen Mock AQR Capital Management 28. Donal Byrne Corvil 29. Stu Taylor Algomi 30. Alfred Eskandar Portware

31. Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority 32. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group 33. Peter Maragos Dash Financial 34. John Fawcett Quantopian 35. Donald Ross III PDQ Enterprises

36. Jennifer Nayar Vela Trading Technologies 37. Dan Raju Tradier 38. Susan Estes OpenDoor Trading 39. David Mercer LMAX Exchange 40. Oki Matsumoto Monex Group