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

30. Alfred Eskandar
Chief Executive Officer
Portware
Last year: 33

Today many financial technologists have artificial intelligence in their toolbox. Not so in 2012, when Alfred Eskandar, formerly head of corporate strategy at buy-side trading platform company Liquidnet Holdings, joined New York–based Portware and set it apart with an AI component that raised the level of sophistication of its execution management system. As of November 2016, with the release of Portware Enterprise version 6.4, the "thinking EMS" offers real-time analytic and decision support enhancements that, according to the 43-year-old CEO, amount to "a virtual trading assistant" supporting complex, global strategies across multiple asset classes.

With more than $10 trillion in institutional assets running on its software, up from $3 trillion in 2012, Portware became part of FactSet Research Systems in an October 2015 acquisition. A year later FactSet bought CYMBA Technologies and Vermilion Software, U.K.-based providers of order management and client reporting systems, respectively. FactSet CEO Philip Snow says the company aims "to more holistically address the portfolio life cycle through both innovation and acquisition," and there is a clear implication that more moves are to come.

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Solana vs. Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: How Do They Compare? Sponsored by CME Group April 29, 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