< The 2016 Tech 50

M&A has always been a hallmark of Markit, the financial information services company Lance Uggla founded in 2003. By the time it went public, in June 2014, London-based Markit was buying businesses at the rate of about three a year. Acquisitions contributed $18.4 million to this year’s first-quarter revenue of $287.8 million. However, the 2015 deals in that accounting — CoreOne Technologies in regulatory reporting and data management, DealHub in foreign exchange processing and Information Mosaic in corporate actions and posttrade software — were mere warm-ups for the blockbuster announced on March 21: a merger of equals with Englewood, Colorado–based data publisher IHS. Chairman and CEO Uggla caught many Markit observers by surprise; IHS is a lesser-known quantity in finance. But that underscores what the 54-year-old is driving at: a melding of Markit’s financial data and technological depth with IHS’s assets and customers across government, energy, transportation and other commercial sectors. The transaction closed on July 12, bringing Markit’s 4,500 employees together with IHS’s 9,000 in a $3.3 billion-in-revenue information powerhouse. London-headquartered IHS Markit will have “a $15 billion-plus market cap, $1 billion free cash flow and 50,000 customers,” including “75 percent of the global 500,” Uggla said before the close. The combination of processing and technological innovation, research and decision support can assist in everything from trading efficiencies to regulatory compliance and “help clients create competitive edges with our content,” says Uggla, who was designated chief integration officer for the merger transition, is serving as president of IHS Markit and will step up to chairman and CEO at the end of next year, when IHS chief Jerre Stead retires. Markit’s offerings, meanwhile, have an increasingly utility, or cooperative, flavor. Such initiatives include due-diligence services KYC.com, the know-your-customer portal that Markit launched jointly with solutions company Genpact in 2014, and KY3P for third-party risk management, introduced last fall and running on Dell Cloud Services. Following the “disrupt yourself” principle, Uggla notes that Markit is actively exploring “how existing processes may be enhanced” by blockchain, notably in a multimonth test of smart contracts for credit-default-swaps processing that teamed Markit with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and distributed-ledger developer Axoni.

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Market Volatility May Boost Distressed Credit Opportunities Sponsored by Fidelity Investments May 12, 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