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The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Richard Prager
#2 Richard Prager, Head of Trading and Liquidity Strategies, BlackRock
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.
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  | 8  | 9  | 10  |
| Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets | Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group | Brad Levy MarkitSERV | Dan Keegan Citi | Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional |
11  | 12  | 13  | 14  | 15  |
| 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  | 19  | 20  |
| 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  | 23  | 24  | 25  |
| 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  | 29  | 30  |
| 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  | 33  | 34  | 35  |
| 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 |