< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow

Founded in 2000, Portware shot to prominence with order-execution technology tailor-made for the automated, analytics-driven, multi-asset-class trading styles that took hold in the early years of the century. But out on the bleeding edge, fortunes can turn quickly. By the time the founders (veteran Wall Street traders Eric Goldberg and Ari Khatchikian) stepped aside and Alfred Eskandar came in as CEO, in March 2012, growth had slowed and the New York–based software company needed new, turnaround-type thinking. Eskandar says he spent his first year “restructuring and reorganizing,” and, with assets acquired from defunct dark-pool operator Pipeline Trading Systems, creating Alpha Vision, “the first marriage of execution management systems with artificial intelligence.” Alpha Vision’s real-time, predictive analytics contrasted with “static blotter data” and allowed Portware to stand out from other EMS purveyors, says Eskandar, 41. Several top investment management firms have since bought in: $8.5 trillion of assets are being managed on Portware’s EMS, up from $3 trillion when Eskandar arrived. Citing his “buy-side-to-buy-side experience” of being a member of the founding team of institutional trading platform Liquidnet, the CEO says: “We’ve been watching the trends develop. Our most prestigious and demanding clients want to push the cutting edge of technology and make it work to their competitive advantage.” In 2015, Eskandar expects to sign more customers with “complex global work flows” and to complement Portware’s capabilities through partnership arrangements like those already in place with Markit for transaction cost analysis and S3 Partners in securities lending.

 
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