< The 2016 Tech 50

In a move to harness disruptive technologies and “future-proof” market operations and infrastructure, Nasdaq in May unveiled a business model that president and COO Adena Friedman describes as a modular portfolio of offerings across the trade life cycle. Dubbed the Nasdaq Financial Framework, it is a significant R&D initiative by the Nasdaq Market Technology unit, whose systems are used by more than 100 marketplaces around the world. Customers gain the flexibility to tailor various applications and emerging technologies — blockchain, for one, is fully integrated in the framework — to their needs. “What we hadn’t done in the past, and what the Financial Framework will do, is create a completely standardized, common messaging layer, a resiliency layer and infrastructure in a much more flexible way for people to add components, including things from other players and their own homegrown technology,” says Friedman, who last December was named COO, responsible for all global business operations and reporting to New York–based Nasdaq’s CEO, Robert Greifeld. The framework’s components are a high-performance communications and operations hub called Nasdaq Core; Core Services, which include connectivity, a data store and blockchain functionality provided by Nasdaq’s partner Chain; and an array of business applications. “The messaging framework will allow the blockchain to persist across each of the components, so as you go end to end, it will track the blockchain all the way through the life of a trade to settlement and depository,” notes Friedman, 47. The idea for the new approach came after two years of working on a trading platform overhaul for Borsa Istanbul that involved 18 Nasdaq technologies. “We realized how great it is to have all the components able to talk to each other,” Friedman says. She expects the framework to be ready for production by the beginning of next year, with the earliest adopters finishing installation about 18 months after that. With a BA in political science from Williams College and an MBA from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, Friedman started at Nasdaq as an intern in 1993 and rose through the ranks until 2011, when she left to become CFO of Carlyle Group. She returned to Nasdaq in 2014 as president, overseeing nontrading businesses including listing and information services and technology.

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Sponsored Seeking Resilience in Gravity-defying Stock Markets Sponsored by Schroders October 20, 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