< The 2016 Tech 50

20
Lee Olesky
CEO
Tradeweb Markets
Last year: 21

Having introduced institutional electronic trading of U.S. Treasury securities in 1998 and added more than 20 asset classes to its now-global platform, Tradeweb Markets did not just overcome the long odds that any start-up faces. The company also survived the turn-of-the-century bubble, when dozens of aspirants failed to gain footholds in online fixed-income trading. Lee Olesky, who had a hand in the original business plan approved by his then-employer, Credit Suisse First Boston, 20 years ago, says he can’t point to any single event or decision that got Tradeweb over the hump. He talks instead about day-to-day consistency and improvement in performance and service, saying, “Every day we come in excited about innovating. There is no endgame.” The founding chairman of New York–based Tradeweb, Olesky left Credit Suisse — a member of the ownership consortium now led by Thomson Reuters — to start another joint venture platform, BrokerTec Global, which ICAP acquired in 2002. He returned to Tradeweb as president and has been CEO since 2008. The 54-year-old espouses a wave theory of market evolution, and Tradeweb caught two big ones: the 1990s Internet-fueled boom and the post–global financial crisis swap execution facility mandate for over-the-counter derivatives. “Change creates opportunity,” Olesky says, “and each wave produces winners.” Citing a confluence of regulatory, liquidity and cost issues, he adds, “We are the beginning of the next wave of change.” On cue, there is a boomlet in new platforms like Direct Match, Electronifie, Liquidnet Fixed Income (see Seth Merrin, No. 22) and Trumid Financial. The CEO says Tradeweb, which has more than 275 technology employees and 850-plus overall, is “uniquely situated” across three segments: institutional, or dealer-to-customer, on Tradeweb; wholesale, or interdealer, through its Dealerweb unit; and retail through Tradeweb Direct. In February, Tradeweb launched its U.S. marketplace for exchange-traded funds after handling more than €200 billion ($226 billion) in notional ETF volume in Europe since 2012. In March the company acquired trade-data and workflow-management software company CodeStreet, part of a bet Olesky is placing on data science as increasingly crucial to “finding the other side of a trade” and other analytical needs.

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

 
The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Higher Taxes Could Reshape How Endowments and Foundations Think about Almost Everything Sponsored by Fidelity Investments June 16, 2025 3. Lance Uggla Markit 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