The 2016 Tech 50: Sebastián Ceria

The Axioma CEO jumped from No. 43 to No. 35 on this year’s ranking.

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< The 2016 Tech 50

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35
Sebastián Ceria
Chief Executive Officer
Axioma
Last year: 43

There is only so much financial or performance information that a privately held company like Axioma will publicly disclose, but the momentum it is building as a global supplier of portfolio optimization and risk management software is transparent enough. New York–based Axioma’s workforce has nearly doubled in a year, to 200, says CEO Sebastián Ceria. That includes high-profile hires like CFO Amaury Dauge, who previously held that title at Euronext, and Standard & Poor’s veterans William Morokoff and Sunil Rajan to head research and the EMEA region, respectively. Axioma also added 20 from the recent acquisition of regulatory- and risk-reporting businesses from fund servicer ConceptONE, which Ceria considers a natural extension of the multiasset, enterprisewide Axioma Risk platform. The latter, after a proof-of-concept and showcase installation with Sweden’s Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, announced last year, “is currently being implemented or evaluated by the largest asset management firms on earth,” Ceria boasts. A win announced in May: Bank of New York Mellon Corp. managed-accounts subsidiary HedgeMark International. “These organizations don’t change risk systems very often because it is very hard to do,” says the 51-year old, who founded Axioma as a consulting firm in 1998 and started selling optimization software three years later. “They understand and have the wherewithal to look at the next generation.” Axioma muscled its way into the risk-and-analytics niche — a stronghold of BlackRock Solutions, IBM Analytics (formerly Algorithmics) and MSCI — by aggressively developing and deploying cloud technology with partner Microsoft Corp. Longtime incumbents are hard-pressed to match the agility, flexible costs and capacity of cloud computing, Ceria says, adding: “We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without the cloud. We are harvesting results of some very hard work” and significant capital investments over the past five years. “Just moving an existing system into the cloud has limited benefit,” he advises. “To get full advantage, our enterprise risk system needed to be built from scratch — truly born in the cloud.”

Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.


The 2016 Tech 50

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1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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3. Lance Uggla
Markit

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4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq

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9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings

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18. David Rutter
R3CEV

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19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group

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25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.

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26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse

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29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings

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30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.

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31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.

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33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services

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34. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management

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39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management

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40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group

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41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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42. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank

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47. Jock Percy
Perseus

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48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions

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49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen

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