< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow
40
Hazem Dawani
Chief Executive Officer
OptionsCity Software
Previously Not Ranked
Software companies commonly provide exercise or play spaces where harried developers can let off steam. OptionsCity Software took the idea outside — and to an extreme — last fall on the exhibit floor of the Futures Industry Association’s Futures & Options Expo in Chicago: It threw a LEGO party. The playtime had a higher purpose, calling attention to the building-block nature of Metro NOW, OptionsCity’s newly overhauled flagship trading system, CEO Hazem Dawani explains. Slated for official release on March 1, Metro NOW will put the power of design in traders’ hands. “Customers can select the widgets they want and build their own trading experience,” says Dawani, 35. Such app-store-like open platforms are being deployed in many high-tech settings, including finance, “but nobody is doing it in trading.” The Illinois Institute of Technology graduate (BS in computer engineering) started working on options automation in 2003, on the cusp of the e-trading explosion, at market maker Chicago Trading Co. In 2006, Dawani and his co-founders — chairman and CTO Victor Glava and CIO Rudy Fasouliotis — formed OptionsCity to serve a broader constituency of market makers and proprietary traders. In 2007 they launched Metro, followed in 2011 by algorithm platform Freeway. Today their company has 60 employees in Chicago, New York and London, and a wide range of brokerage, hedge fund and other institutional clients. In November it made its first acquisition, Optionshop, a start-up with three employees and cloud service expertise. “It is already integrated and will launch a product in the next few months,” Dawani says.
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 |
