The 2016 Tech 50: Seth Merrin

The Liquidnet Holdings CEO jumps to No. 22 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

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< The 2016 Tech 50

22
Seth Merrin
Chief Executive Officer
Liquidnet Holdings
Last year: 23

“Our goal is to make markets more efficient,” Seth Merrin says. “The only way we know how to do this is with technology.” Merrin is proving the point with 15-year-old trading platform operator Liquidnet Holdings, and not for the first time. Three decades ago he left a risk arbitrage trading job at CIBC Oppenheimer to start Merrin Financial, which transformed buy-side trading with its invention of the order management system. After co-founding another start-up, application-integration software company VIE Systems, in the 1990s, Merrin launched Liquidnet, a pioneering dark pool handling large block orders — currently averaging more than 42,000 shares ($1.8 million principal) — that are difficult for investment managers to execute on open exchanges. More than 800 member firms with $14 trillion in combined assets under management are currently trading in 44 markets around the world. New York–based Liquidnet’s first-quarter U.S. average daily volume of 46 million shares was up 21 percent year-over-year, and the firm also set records in other regions. Last September, with Liquidnet Fixed Income, the firm brought its ethos of reinvention into the corporate bond market, setting a minimum order size of $500,000. “It’s pretty absurd if in this day and age you can only trade a bond through a human being,” Merrin says. The platform now has 135 member firms trading $2 billion in corporate names, and the 56-year-old CEO anticipates steady growth because “people in this industry need to see you’re the winner” before later adopters will sign on. Merrin expects further opportunity in equity execution and quantitative services, filling gaps left by the retreat of big, capital-constrained banks. Liquidnet has developed an electronic “high-touch trader” to provide copilotlike order advice and monitoring. Targeted Invitations, launched in Europe late last year and available globally as of April, extends the block-trading model by “taking on one of the last bastions of inefficiency for the buy side: the sales trading process,” according to Merrin. These targeted block trades have been averaging 98,000 shares.

Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.


The 2016 Tech 50

Sponsored

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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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