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The 2015 Trading Technology 40: R. Cromwell Coulson
#37 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.
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 |