This content is from: Portfolio
The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Ari Studnitzer
No. 10 Ari Studnitzer, CME Group


In 1992 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange introduced Globex, a pioneering electronic futures platform that over time would marginalize open-outcry trading. Four years later Allen Studnitzer saw e-trading and other changes coming and sold his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, which merged with CME in 2007 to form CME Group, where Studnitzer’s son Ari is today a top technology executive. Ari Studnitzer appreciates the irony that he is “helping drive the vision that my father couldn’t fully articulate back in the 1990s.” CME still sees “a place for both the floor and electronic markets,” says Studnitzer, 38. “But the electronic markets have enabled globalization.” As head of technology, architecture and product management, Studnitzer reports to CME chief information officer Kevin Kometer (No. 1 last year) and works across multiple divisions — clearing, operations, products and services, and technology — on implementing client-focused technology and enhancing the customer experience. A case in point is the Customer Center, a portal completed last year that allows access to CME Group applications and services via a single log-on. Studnitzer, who earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, first worked for CME in 2000 as a Deloitte consultant and joined full-time in 2002, just before the now-$3.3 billion-in-revenue company went public. Formerly head of the market data and order routing teams, Studnitzer was head of enterprise architecture before taking on broader IT and product responsibilities in 2014. A member of the investment committee of CME Ventures, which takes strategic stakes in start-ups, he says the first decade of this century was all about “electronification.” Now, he explains, platforms are converging in a wave of “digitization. Cloud technology and [browser standard] HTML5 are allowing people in Asia or Europe to pull out an iPad or computer and see the same information. We can increase capacity and provide new services that we never thought possible.” •
![]() 1. Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg ![]() 2. Richard Prager BlackRock ![]() 3. Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets ![]() 4. Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings ![]() 5. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq |
![]() 6. Brad Levy Markit ![]() 7. Dan Keegan Citi ![]() 8. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional ![]() 9. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group ![]() 10. Ari Studnitzer CME Group |
![]() 11. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange ![]() 12. Gerald O’Connell CBOE Holdings ![]() 13. Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings ![]() 14. Gil Mandelzis EBS BrokerTec (ICAP) ![]() 15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
![]() 16. Rob Park IEX Group ![]() 17. Philip Weisberg Thomson Reuters ![]() 18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT ![]() 19. Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange ![]() 20. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities |
![]() 21. Eric Noll Convergex ![]() 22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology ![]() 23. Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings ![]() 24. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology ![]() 25. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange |
![]() 26. Manoj Narang Mana Partners ![]() 27. Gaurav Suri Arcesium ![]() 28. Robert Sloan S3 Partners ![]() 29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock AQR Capital Mgmt ![]() 30. Stu Taylor Algomi |
![]() 31. D. Keith Ross Jr. PDQ Enterprises ![]() 32. Donal Byrne Corvil ![]() 33. Alfred Eskandar Portware ![]() 34. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group ![]() 35. Masayuki Hosaka Rakuten |
![]() 36. Peter Maragos and David Karat Dash Financial ![]() 37. Amar Kuchinad Electronifie ![]() 38. Jennifer Nayar SR Labs ![]() 39. Dave Snowdon Metamako ![]() 40. Dan Raju Tradier |