This content is from: Portfolio
The 2016 Tech 50: David Harding
The CEO of Winton Capital Management makes his debut on the Tech 50 ranking at No. 39.
As a systematic investor, David Harding has been relying on simulations to research investment strategies since the 1980s. “Back in the old days, we were restricted by the speed of computing,” says Harding, 54, who co-founded pioneering commodities trading adviser Adam, Harding & Lueck (AHL) in 1987. “It was a continual cycle of finding a way to use the faster computers to do a more complicated bit of simulation and then waiting for the new computers to arrive.” After selling AHL in 1996 to what is now Man Group, Harding started London-based Winton Capital Management the following year with $2 million. Today the 450-person firm manages $34.5 billion, and computing power is no longer an issue. For Harding, a self-described “science geek” who studied theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge, innovation centers on “the intellectual technology development of different statistical ways of looking at data, different ways of visualizing data and the inferences from data.” Winton, which has offices in a half dozen countries, recently opened a six-person outpost in San Francisco to tap into Silicon Valley’s data-science talent pool. The firm has been supporting the fintech revolution. In 2014 it began working with Cyber London, Europe’s first cybersecurity incubator. Winton cosponsors Cyber London and is currently hosting its third cohort of start-ups at the firm’s Hammersmith headquarters. Last year Harding launched Winton Ventures to invest the firm’s own money in young data-science companies, particularly those working with new types of data from nontraditional sources. “We attempt to use the scientific method broadly to evaluate the relationship between things that affect the prices of things, what we call explanatory variables, potential influences on price and the statistical likelihood of price change,” Harding says. “To a greater or lesser extent, that’s what all systematic investors are doing.”
 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 |