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The 2016 Tech 50: Brad Katsuyama

The CEO of IEX Group makes his debut on the Tech 50 ranking at No. 24.

24
Brad Katsuyama
Chief Executive Officer
IEX Group
PNR

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
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

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