< The 2016 Tech 50

14
Michael Bodson
President and Chief Executive Officer
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
Last year: 14

Much commentary about blockchain has centered on the posttrade, or back end, of transaction processing and has seemed to spell the demise of clearing and settlement — or, at least, the way it has historically been done by Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. “Headlines about the DTCC disappearing overnight were annoying the hell out of me,” says Michael Bodson, president and CEO of the premier industry-owned posttrade utility, which processes some $1.6 quadrillion in securities trades annually. Apparently deciding that if he couldn’t beat blockchain, he’d join it, Bodson set out to find the best fit for his operation. In January, DTCC joined in a round of funding for Digital Asset Holdings (see Blythe Masters, No. 17) that eventually exceeded $60 million, along with the likes of Accenture, Citi, CME Group, Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co. “We thought Digital Asset was one of the strongest — if not the strongest — blockchain providers out there,” says Bodson, 58. In March, DTCC and DAH, both New York–based, announced a plan to develop and test distributed ledger technology for the $2.6 trillion repo market. DTCC also joined with four global banks, technology developer Axoni and Markit (see Lance Uggla, No. 3) in a test of smart contracts for processing single-name credit default swaps. “No one survives by putting their head in the sand,” says Bodson, who also maintains that “the U.S. cash security markets are the most efficient. We have the best posttrade processing in the world.” Although there will be initial rollouts and use cases bringing improvements in the near term, blockchain will not “negate or replace the current infrastructure for seven, ten or even 15 years.”

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 3. Lance Uggla Markit C-PACE: The Rapidly Growing Corner of Real Estate Finance Catching Institutional Attention Sponsored by Nuveen June 4, 2025 4. Phupinder Gill CME Group 5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group

7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq 9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 12. David Craig Thomson Reuters

13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 18. David Rutter R3CEV

19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. 20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group

25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 26. David Gledhill DBS Bank 27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse 29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings 30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co.

31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence 32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp. 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz

37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 39. David Harding Winton Capital Management 40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 42. Jim Minnick eVestment

43. Stephane Dubois Xignite 44. Mazy Dar OpenFin 45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank 47. Jock Percy Perseus 48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions

49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 50. Pieter van der Does Adyen