< The 2016 Tech 50

Long waits for regulatory approvals — par for the course in the financial industry — might try the patience of entrepreneurs intent on disrupting the old order. Brad Katsuyama, however, wasn’t driven to distraction by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s deliberations on IEX Group’s application, filed in August 2015 and approved on June 17, to become a full-fledged national exchange. All the while, he had a business to run, having launched the upstart, buy-side-owned IEX alternative trading system in 2013. After being portrayed heroically in Michael Lewis’s 2014 best seller, Flash Boys, Katsuyama was continually debating opponents of what he presented as a “fair and simple” antidote to established exchanges’ costs and complexities. The application process “forced all parties to be transparent about what they stand for,” says the 38-year-old. Those that supported IEX’s bid — including Franklin Templeton Investments, Goldman Sachs Group and OppenheimerFunds — were prominently thanked on the company’s website. New York–based IEX’s primary innovation, developed in-house, is a 350-microsecond “speed bump” that is designed to negate the advantages used by some predatory high frequency traders. “Pension, mutual and hedge funds don’t care about microseconds, and they’re the real liquidity providers for the market,” Katsuyama says. “The world doesn’t need another exchange selling microwave products.” IEX’s ranks have grown rapidly: It hired employee No. 50 in January 2015, and 22 more through mid-July 2016. CEO Katsuyama’s senior team combines colleagues he previously worked with at RBC Capital Markets — chief technology officer Rob Park, president Ronan Ryan, COO John Schwall — with the likes of chief market policy officer John Ramsay, a former SEC trading and markets division head; chief regulatory officer Claudia Crowley, who was CEO of NYSE Regulation; general counsel Sophia Lee, formerly of Liquidnet Holdings; and chief strategy officer Eric Stockland, who joined in June from KCG Holdings and had represented KCG on IEX’s Quality of Markets Committee. Says Katsuyama: “We have to ask, Do we want to follow other people’s models or forge our own path? We spend a lot of time meeting with companies outside our core business and thinking about how we can incorporate those ideas.”

 
The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 3. Lance Uggla Markit Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 5, 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