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

9. Mike Blum
Chief Technology Officer
KCG Holdings
PNR

For Mike Blum, joining KCG Holdings in January 2016 was a reunion of sorts. From 2009 through 2012 he had been head of Getco Execution Services, a key client-facing business of the high-tech Chicago trading firm Getco. In 2013 — as Blum was starting a roughly two-year stint as chief technology officer of hedge fund firm Teza Technologies — Getco acquired Knight Capital Group. Though he found "some Getco groups still intact" at what is now KCG Holdings, Blum says, the New York–based company "is different in a lot of ways," with a broader range of market making and trading services. KCG — a self-described "independent, pure-play, technology-driven intermediary in liquid financial instruments" — is in the process of moving all its operations onto a unified technology platform. That creates clean-slate opportunities for efficiencies and innovations that Blum finds exciting and says helped convince him to sign on.

Tapped initially as global head of client technology, Blum, 49, became CTO in October, succeeding Jonathan Ross (No. 4 last year), who left to pursue technology interests outside of trading and markets. With a BS in computer science from the University of Dayton, Blum started his career as a developer for electronic market making pioneer Automated Trading Desk. After serving as vice president of development at Island ECN, he made significant trading technology contributions at UBS, where he became a managing director of the investment bank. Blum notes that his subsequent business responsibilities at Getco, and then taking charge of "the whole technology stack" for the first time at Teza, prepared him for the changes and challenges presented by KCG. He has seen high frequency trading evolve in stages, from "conquering complexity" in market structure to maximizing speed. Although those advanced capabilities cannot be neglected, "the focus now is on alpha," Blum says. "Now it's about getting smarter."

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Private Markets Investment Outlook Q2 2025: Opportunities Amid Uncertainty Sponsored by Schroders Capital May 1, 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