< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow

While much of the buy side bemoans the lack of fixed-income liquidity as a result of dealers’ retreat from principal trading, BlackRock’s Richard Prager offers a different perspective. Corporate bond liquidity is plentiful, in his view. The problem is that “we still have a market structure that is dependent on a principal-based system,” says the $4.3 trillion money management giant’s head of trading and liquidity strategies. “We need to modernize the market structure.” Although Prager, 54, is a strong advocate of electronic trading, that is “only part of the story.” Other elements of the solution he envisions include all-to-all platforms that would attract larger numbers of market participants; new standards and protocols to streamline issuance and trading; and behavioral and attitudinal changes among the players. “It’s all about the CUSIPs [bond issues], the behavior of the participants, the protocols. It’s the whole picture,” says Prager, who joined New York–based BlackRock in 2009 after a career on the sell side, most recently eight years with Bank of America Corp. “We need leadership from the banks, from frequent issuers and from regulators.” Noting that the Securities and Exchange Commission has acknowledged the need to address bond market structure, he adds, “We are on a journey, and it is paying off.” In its own trading efforts, to ensure it can transact regardless of market conditions, BlackRock links to more than 200 liquidity pools, Prager says. The firm is aggregating multiple pricing streams; designing systems that allow traders to view different markets at their desktops and trade with fewer clicks; and upgrading analytics, such as transaction cost analysis.

See also Prager's profiles in the 2013 Trading Technology 40 and the 2012 Trading Technology 30.

 
The 2015 Trading Technology 40

1	2	3	4	5
Kevin Kometer CME Group	Richard Prager BlackRock	Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg Tradebook	Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings	Charles Vice Intercontinental Exchange
6	7 Zef Nikolla	8	9	10
Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets	Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group	Brad Levy MarkitSERV	Dan Keegan Citi	Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional
11 Mark McQueen	12	13	14	15 Margaret Fox
Gerard Beatty Goldman Sachs Group	Gerald O'Connell CBOE Holdings	Brenda Hoffman TMX Group	Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets	Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings
16	17	18 Martin H. Simon	19 Todd Plitt	20 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Gil Mandelzis EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP)	Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority	Jerry Dobner GFI Group	Michael Liberman BlueMountain Capital Management
21	22 Photographer:http://www.digitalh	23	24 Dennis Degnan	25 Paul Elledge
Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing	Jamie Selway Investment Technology Group	Brad Katsuyama IEX Group	John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT	Jamil Nazarali Citadel Execution Services
26	27	28 Picasa	29 Andrew Harrer	30 Takashi KATO
Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange	Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy Broadway Technology	Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings	Manoj Narang Tradeworx, Thesys Technologies	Oki Matsumoto Monex Group
31	32 unknown	33 Douglas Kurn	34 Luludi/LUZ	35 William Neumann Photography
Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange	Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology	Stu Taylor Algomi	Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado BM&FBovespa	Tal Cohen Chi-X Global Holdings
36	37	38	39	40
Donal Byrne Corvil	R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group	Alfred Eskandar Portware	Richard Korhammer SR Labs	Hazem Dawani OptionsCity Software