< The 2017 Tech 40

24. David Gledhill
Group Chief Information Officer and Head of Group Technology and Operations
DBS Bank
Last year: 26

With financial support and other encouragement from the city-state government and central bank, Singapore has established itself as a hub of financial-technology innovation rivaling those of the U.K. and U.S. Even before the fintech boom of the last several years — at least since David Gledhill became head of group technology and operations in 2008 — DBS Bank was investing aggressively in automation to serve a highly mobile and tech-literate customer base across 18 markets, six of them considered priorities: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the home base of Singapore. Today the bank, with 482 billion Singapore dollars ($354 billion) in assets, calls itself "digital to the core" and aspires to be, as stated in its most recent annual report, "a 22,000-person startup" (that being its total number of employees). Out of 7 million consumer banking and wealth management customers, more than 3 million are banking on the Internet and 2.2 million using mobile devices. Gledhill, 55, a Briton and former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive who is now DBS's group chief information officer, oversees 10,000 professionals (about 85 percent are on staff; the rest are vendors and contractors). In February the group announced plans to recruit 100 developers skilled in big data, machine learning, and other disruptive technologies in a hackathon competition dubbed Hack2Hire. The bank also nurtures young talent through the UNI.CORN internship program, which, now in its second year, fielded more than 1,000 applications for 24 spots.

 
The 2017 Tech 40

1. Adena Friedman NASDAQ 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Sponsored Morningstar’s Idzorek Explores a New Paradigm for Allocators Sponsored by Morningstar November 12, 2025 5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. David Craig Thomson Reuters 8. Michael Spencer NEX Group 9. Don Callahan Citigroup 10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group

11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 12. Terrence Duffy CME Group 13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments 15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings

16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp. 17. Steven Lieblich Citadel 18. David Rutter R3CEV 19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments

21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group 22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 24. David Gledhill DBS Bank 25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings

26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp. 30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence

31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma

36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions 40. Jim Minnick eVestment