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

11. Ronald DePoalo
Chief Information Officer
Fidelity Institutional
Last year: 8

A $2.1 trillion asset manager with more than 25 million individual customers, Fidelity Investments also has an institutional arm that includes clearing and custody businesses with more than $1.9 trillion in assets under administration, and brokerage and trading services for a wide range of intermediary firms. The entire, global enterprise has benefited from "a long-term commitment to investing in technology and innovation — and we've kept that commitment throughout the recent market cycles," says Ronald DePoalo, chief information officer of Fidelity Institutional. "We are focused on providing the best trading experience for both our retail customers and our institutional clients, and that's been resonating with the adoption we're seeing and the client feedback we're getting," the 52-year-old adds, noting that Fidelity is ranked by Barron's magazine as the best online brokerage — and is No. 1 in price improvement on trades and overall execution quality.

He reports increased adoption of Fidelity Institutional's PB Optimize, recently enhanced with Broker Wallet, which estimates a hedge fund's return on assets with each of its providers. Supporting a "consultative approach" to clients' best execution are EX-RAY for transaction cost analysis in equities; HELM, a suite of trade execution tools and analytics; and posttrade analytics for fixed income.

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Building Resilient Portfolios: Infrastructure’s Strategic Advantage Sponsored by IFM Investors May 9, 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