This content is from: Portfolio
The 2016 Tech 50: David Craig
The president of financial and risk at Thomson Reuters moves to No. 12 from No. 11 on the Tech 50 ranking.
At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January, David Craig’s business card was a conversation piece: Printed on it is a bar code that when scanned displays his Thomson Reuters Permanent Identifier, or PermID. The New York–based media and information company has created some 200 million such codes for people, legal entities and securities in a drive to automate and secure identification processes in an increasingly digital marketplace. One area where strong identification is currently lacking is the blockchain, which was designed to protect anonymity. “We believe that transactions cannot be anonymous in a trusted world,” says Craig, 46, president of Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk, which accounts for half of the corporation’s $12.2 billion in annual revenue. “While you might not want the market to know who your counterparty is, you need to know.” PermID is being offered to various blockchain and federated-identity initiatives, and is being rolled out on World-Check, Thomson Reuters’ anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer compliance service. Financial & Risk, the unit Craig has headed since 2011 — three years after Thomson Corp.’s $17 billion acquisition of Reuters Group — has consolidated more than 850 products into some 150 offerings on three flagship platforms: the Eikon desktop, Elektron for data and trading applications, and Accelus for governance, risk and compliance. “We’ve moved from product to platform, which for us is about a business model, not just a technology play,” Craig explains. Under the open platform model, third-party developers and clients can create applications and integrate them into their Eikon terminals. The App Studio, launched in October, is generating a regular flow of new programs from independent software developers in what amounts to an expanding ecosystem for innovation. “I really admire these fintech companies that I spend a lot of time with,” Craig says. “Five men and women in a garage can do a lot at the moment.”
Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.
 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 |