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The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Richard Korhammer
#39 Richard Korhammer, Chief Executive Officer, SR Labs
The sale last July of Wombat Financial Software, a unit within NYSE Technologies, was relatively inconsequential for Intercontinental Exchange, following its $11 billion acquisition of NYSE Euronext eight months earlier. For SR Labs, which bought Wombat for an undisclosed price, the transaction was momentous: Founded in 2007 as Street Response Laboratories by former Merrill Lynch & Co. senior consultant Srinivasan Ramiah, the New York–based company expanded its high-performance execution and market data offerings, and also lured in e-trading pioneer Richard Korhammer as CEO. He was co-founder and CEO of Lava Trading, which launched in 1999, shot to success as an equity and foreign exchange platform, and was acquired in 2004 by Citigroup, where Korhammer stayed on through 2006 as head of global equities electronic execution. After taking a year off and relocating to his wife’s native Australia, Korhammer kept a hand in the game as chairman of over-the-counter marketplace Yieldbroker — a role he retains. In November, Yieldbroker’s 12 owners, including Citi, Deutsche Bank and Macquarie, sold a 49 percent stake to exchange operator ASX Group. Even though, as Korhammer notes, “SR is embedded in large-institution infrastructure — ten of the top 20 investment banks are clients,” the firm has had a low profile. That is bound to change with the 48-year-old at the helm and Wombat’s market data management capabilities complementing SR’s ultralow-latency systems at a time when customers are trying to reduce costs and operational complexity. “We are in a crowded space,” the CEO says, “but if we do this right, it can make a tremendous difference.”
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 |