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The 2016 Tech 50: R. Martin Chavez

Chavez, CIO of Goldman Sachs Group, comes in at No. 6 this year, up from No. 7 in 2015.

By Peter Vasiliev

July 18, 2016

< The 2016 Tech 50

R. Martin Chavez

Chief Information Officer

Goldman Sachs Group

Last year: 7

Considering that some 11,000 of Goldman Sachs Group’s 36,500 employees are engineers, “we think of technology as an essential driver of innovation in all our businesses,” says chief information officer R. Martin Chavez. “Against the ever-evolving market structure backdrop, our ability to innovate and provide a range of execution alternatives is essential for our clients, who increasingly depend on our ability to integrate market expertise with automation across products.” Priorities and opportunities center on automating services and deepening client relationships, he says, pointing to the Marquee Studio and SIMON (Structured Investment Marketplace and Online Network) apps as examples. The former consists of portfolio and risk analytics tools for internal and external clients; the latter includes education, investment customization and performance analysis tools for financial advisers. “Large financial service firms have generally trailed the tech sector in adopting open APIs [application programming interfaces], so our leadership in that area is exciting,” Chavez says. This year the firm consolidated e-trading assets and trading businesses in a systematic market-making group, says the 52-year-old, who became a Goldman partner in 2006 and CIO in 2013 after serving as global co-COO of equities. A senior-level digital strategies group was formed to coordinate technology initiatives across the securities division. With the acquisition in April of General Electric Co.’s GE Capital Bank and its $16 billion in online deposits, now part of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, the venerable Wall Street firm is in uncharted consumer lending territory. “We’ve learned so many lessons from building our existing businesses, but we have immense humility for what we don’t know, having never built a retail business organically at the firm,” Chavez explains. “In many regards, we are a start-up with 147 years of experience.” A Stanford University Ph.D in medical information sciences who also earned a master’s in computer science from Harvard University, Chavez has done two stints with Goldman Sachs, initially in the J. Aron & Co. currency and commodities division from 1993 to 1997. Before returning in 2005, he served as global head of energy derivatives for Credit Suisse Financial Products and CEO of risk management systems company Kiodex.

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The 2016 Tech 50