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The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Alfred Eskandar

#38 Alfred Eskandar, Chief Executive Officer, Portware

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Alfred Eskandar
Chief Executive Officer
Portware

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
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


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