The 2016 Tech 50: Robert Goldstein

BlackRock’s COO comes in at No. 7 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

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< The 2016 Tech 50

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7
Robert Goldstein
Chief Operating Officer
BlackRock
Last year: 5

Since becoming chief operating officer of $4.6 trillion-in-assets money manager BlackRock in July 2014, Robert Goldstein has held on to his previous responsibilities as global head of BlackRock Solutions, the technology arm that includes the Aladdin portfolio and risk management systems business and posted $646 million in revenue last year. Goldstein is currently focused on taking BlackRock’s historically institutional technology into the retail realm. The route to mainstream investors goes through FutureAdvisor, a San Francisco–based digital, or “robo,” wealth manager that BlackRock acquired last September, and distribution partnerships with the likes of LPL Financial and RBC Wealth Management. “We’ve taken what we believe is the leading platform for digital advice and we’re institutionalizing it,” says Goldstein, 42, who joined BlackRock as an analyst in 1994, moved to BlackRock Solutions at its start in 1999 and has headed the unit since 2009. “The regulatory environment is helping support an increasing need for risk transparency across all these end-customer portfolios,” Goldstein adds. “We’re delivering best-in-class portfolio construction, risk analytics and content.” He stresses that the New York–based firm is continuing to invest in Aladdin as its core system “while also leveraging new technology to open Aladdin and make its data more accessible in this world of everybody being a data scientist.” Aladdin’s revenue jumped to $528 million in 2015 from $474 million the year before, Goldstein says, with more than half of the total coming from global clients, up from 20 percent in 2010. BlackRock has introduced a version of Aladdin for custodians, fund accountants and other service providers; JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s securities services business is a new client. Goldstein muses that computing advances could significantly change traditional exception-based work flows, which are designed to identify problems needing human intervention. “We never figured out as an industry why the computer can’t do it,” he says. “If technology can identify the problem, why can’t it fix the problem?”


The 2016 Tech 50

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1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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3. Lance Uggla
Markit

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4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq

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9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings

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18. David Rutter
R3CEV

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19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group

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25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.

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26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse

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29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings

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30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.

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31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.

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33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services

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34. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management

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39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management

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40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group

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41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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42. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank

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47. Jock Percy
Perseus

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48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions

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49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen

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