< The 2016 Trading Technology 40

Although 2015 was challenging for KCG Holdings — trading revenue was down year-over-year in three of the four quarters as a result of light equity market volumes and low volatility — the Jersey City, New Jersey–based brokerage firm had a great year on the technology front, according to CTO Jonathan Ross. “You saw a lot of the costs come down over the course of the year, and a lot of that is due to technology,” says Ross, 47, who was CTO of high frequency trading shop Getco before its 2013 acquisition of executing brokerage Knight Capital Group created KCG. “We continued to optimize our infrastructure and reduce our data expenses.” KCG, which has computer servers in 50 co-location facilities worldwide and trades in 70 markets, completed the integration of the merged companies’ networking infrastructure last year and currently is working on consolidating data centers. Customers are starting to see the benefits of, for example, the combination of the firm’s smart order router and algorithmic trading platform, says Ross, who oversees a team of some 350 technologists. An avid programmer, he believes financial technology is at a major inflection point: “You’re seeing really amazing stuff being done at Internet start-ups and in the open-source community that’s applicable to finance.” As a result, he expects more financial firms to collaborate, pointing to KCG’s recent New Line Networks joint venture with World Class Wireless, widely believed to be owned by HFT firm Jump Trading: It combines the firms’ microwave towers to create a global wireless network. “Ten years ago you would never have seen two highly programmatic high frequency market makers collaborating like that,” he says.

 
2016 Trading Technology 40

1. Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg 2. Richard Prager BlackRock Robeco Fundamental Equities: High-conviction Strategies to Target Alpha Sponsored by Robeco July 8, 2025 3. Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets 4. Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings 5. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq

6. Brad Levy Markit 7. Dan Keegan Citi 8. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional 9. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group 10. Ari Studnitzer CME Group

11. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange 12. Gerald O’Connell CBOE Holdings 13. Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings 14. Gil Mandelzis EBS BrokerTec (ICAP) 15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

16. Rob Park IEX Group 17. Philip Weisberg Thomson Reuters 18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT 19. Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange 20. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities

21. Eric Noll Convergex 22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology 23. Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings 24. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology 25. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange

26. Manoj Narang Mana Partners 27. Gaurav Suri Arcesium 28. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock AQR Capital Mgmt 30. Stu Taylor Algomi

31. D. Keith Ross Jr. PDQ Enterprises 32. Donal Byrne Corvil 33. Alfred Eskandar Portware 34. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group 35. Masayuki Hosaka Rakuten

36. Peter Maragos and David Karat Dash Financial 37. Amar Kuchinad Electronifie 38. Jennifer Nayar SR Labs 39. Dave Snowdon Metamako 40. Dan Raju Tradier