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The 2015 Trading Technology 40: R. Cromwell Coulson

#37 R. Cromwell Coulson, President and Chief Executive Officer, OTC Markets Group

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R. Cromwell Coulson
President and Chief Executive Officer
OTC Markets Group

R. Cromwell Coulson didn’t just grudgingly accept the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation SCI (Systems Compliance and Integrity). When the rule, designed to ensure the reliability of financial market operations, was adopted in November, he celebrated. His company’s OTC Link alternative trading system falls under SCI. As a result, “we will step up our game — we become better because of it,” says Coulson, who has run New York–based OTC Markets Group since 1997. The firm now has 85 employees and trades 10,000 securities on its three segmented marketplaces for over-the-counter shares and American depositary receipts. The 48-year-old president and CEO has long contended that these platforms are as “mission critical” as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market. As an “SCI entity,” he proclaims, “we have joined that club.” OTC Markets is “the third option [after NYSE and Nasdaq] for companies looking to go public, be transparent and provide liquidity to shareholders.” Looking ahead, he adds: “We have a lot of work to do. Technology is a big part of it. That is the lifeblood of this business.” Upgrades are in the offing for broker-dealer connectivity and disaster recovery. “The best way to prove you have good disaster recovery systems is to run production systems on them, and we will do that this year,” Coulson says. After raising operational and eligibility standards in 2014, OTC Markets is positioning its OTCQB venture-stage platform to be for the U.S. what TMX Group’s TSX Venture Exchange is in Canada and London Stock Exchange Group’s AIM is in Europe.

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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