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The 2016 Tech 50: Michael Cooper
BT Radianz’s CTO moves from No. 33 to No. 36 on this year’s ranking.

In 2005, BT Group paid Reuters Group $175 million to acquire Radianz, which today operates a leading cloud-computing network for the financial services industry. Radianz was providing such utility services back then as well, but it took a few years for “cloud” to catch on as a metaphor and, ultimately, the widely adopted on-demand, pay-as-you-go model that it has become. Although some still debate whether it is safe to store certain corporate “crown jewels” in a shared infrastructure, “by now everyone has at least mentally come over the line,” says Michael Cooper, who became an early Radianz employee in 2001 and since 2010 has been CTO of BT Radianz, which operates within London-based BT’s global banking and financial markets group. The cloud is a clear alternative to “costs of distribution that are never-ending,” Cooper says. Software and other “as-a-service” facilities in the cloud “make more sense.” The 53-year-old points out that Radianz was ahead of its time in another way: as a collaborative community and ecosystem. Connecting thousands of financial market customer endpoints worldwide, the Radianz cloud added 169 customers in the past year and more than 150 new applications from more than 30 providers. “The number of new providers reflects changes in market structure and how they are being operationalized,” Cooper explains. BT’s global reach — and activity in its cloud — yields insight into how financial technologies are evolving. The CTO observes that “in the past 18 months, Singapore has emerged” as a force in fintech innovation, potentially rivaling the U.K. and the U.S. He sees other Asia-Pacific financial capitals — Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo — also developing ecosystems capable of “exploiting local advantages.” While exploring some “early use cases” of blockchain, Cooper says, he has become particularly intrigued by virtual identification-security methods known as tokenization. “Identity is an area of considerable interest,” he says. “This technology can facilitate new ways of doing business.”
Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.
![]() 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 |