< The 2016 Tech 50

The longtime head of Nomura Research Institute’s financial technology solutions group, Yasuki Okai, relocated to New York last year to spearhead the Tokyo-based systems consulting company’s international growth. But Japan remains NRI’s center of gravity — the ¥421 billion ($3.5 billion)-in-revenue firm began life in the 1960s as a Nomura Securities International think tank — and the site of its most globally significant projects. Nomura Securities is still a top customer, and Okai says a milestone last year was the brokerage’s replacement of its in-house retail and capital markets back offices with NRI’s STAR and I-STAR hosted, or application service provider, platforms. The conversion both lowered Nomura Securities’ costs and simplified its technology architecture. “This highlights the trend that major broker-dealers are focusing more on technology-cost reduction because of issues such as regulatory compliance,” says Okai, 53, who has worked for NRI since it entered the tech solutions business in 1988. He points to a posttrade outsourcing deal with UBS Securities Co. in Japan, announced last September, as “a very significant achievement for us because it was the first utility service in Japan for investment banks.” At a time when many firms are trying to reduce fixed costs, “this implementation signifies that NRI was able to join the competition to make utility service happen for investment banks’ entire back-office operations.” NRI in June acquired Hingham, Massachusetts-based investment operations consulting firm Cutter Associates, which has more than 200 asset management, insurance and pension fund clients worldwide. In April, NRI launched the second phase of what it termed a “proof of concept to examine the applicability of blockchain technology for securities markets,” with collaborators including Japan Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Nomura Securities and SBI Securities. “We are excited to be leading the charge with great partners,” says Okai, though he believes it could take ten years for the “big change” of distributed ledger to take hold.

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Building Resilient Portfolios: Infrastructure’s Strategic Advantage Sponsored by IFM Investors May 9, 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