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

32. R. Cromwell Coulson
President and Chief Executive Officer
OTC Markets Group
Last year: 34

Exchange listing is costly and, when reporting and other management burdens are factored in, unattractive for many small public companies. OTC Markets Group offers an alternative path to visibility and liquidity and, for some, a stepping-stone onto an exchange. Some 10,000 securities trade on the New York–based company's three platforms. The top-tier OTCQX, marking its tenth anniversary in 2017, serves 399 domestic and global issuers with an aggregate $1.4 trillion in market capitalization. Its $36.8 billion in annual dollar volume represents 20 percent of the total for all over-the-counter securities.

That market, the middle-tier OTCQB Venture Market, and OTC Pink are more than just trading venues. OTC Markets Group, led by president and CEO R. Cromwell Coulson since 1997, aims to create favorable conditions for trading, transparency, disclosures, and analytics. The strategy is increasingly data-driven; 2016 saw the introduction of an online Research Marketplace to encourage independent analysis of OTCQX and OTCQB companies; a Compliance Analytics offering; and execution-quality and market maker performance metrics on the company's OTC Link alternative trading system. "The fastest execution is not always the best execution," Coulson, 50, notes. Armed with the data, "broker-dealers might tell market makers to slow down to get better execution quality."

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Finding, Applying for, and Winning Grant Funding: Tips for Nonprofits Sponsored by Fidelity Investments April 28, 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