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The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Jonathan Ross

No. 4 Jonathan Ross, Chief Technology Officer, KCG Holdings, Last year: 4

4
Jonathan Ross
Chief Technology Officer
KCG Holdings
Last year: 4

Although 2015 was challenging for KCG Holdings — trading revenue was down year-over-year in three of the four quarters as a result of light equity market volumes and low volatility — the Jersey City, New Jersey–based brokerage firm had a great year on the technology front, according to CTO Jonathan Ross. “You saw a lot of the costs come down over the course of the year, and a lot of that is due to technology,” says Ross, 47, who was CTO of high frequency trading shop Getco before its 2013 acquisition of executing brokerage Knight Capital Group created KCG. “We continued to optimize our infrastructure and reduce our data expenses.” KCG, which has computer servers in 50 co-location facilities worldwide and trades in 70 markets, completed the integration of the merged companies’ networking infrastructure last year and currently is working on consolidating data centers. Customers are starting to see the benefits of, for example, the combination of the firm’s smart order router and algorithmic trading platform, says Ross, who oversees a team of some 350 technologists. An avid programmer, he believes financial technology is at a major inflection point: “You’re seeing really amazing stuff being done at Internet start-ups and in the open-source community that’s applicable to finance.” As a result, he expects more financial firms to collaborate, pointing to KCG’s recent New Line Networks joint venture with World Class Wireless, widely believed to be owned by HFT firm Jump Trading: It combines the firms’ microwave towers to create a global wireless network. “Ten years ago you would never have seen two highly programmatic high frequency market makers collaborating like that,” he says.

2016 Trading Technology 40

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

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