This content is from: Research

The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Bina Kalola

#16 Bina Kalola, Head of Global Equities Strategic Direct Investments, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

16
Bina Kalola
Head of Global Equities Strategic Direct Investments
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Previously Not Ranked

For as long as she can remember, Bina Kalola has had an entrepreneurial streak. As head of global equities strategic direct investments for Bank of America Merrill Lynch since 2006, Kalola is a corporate venture capitalist, overseeing strategic financial technology investments. “The number of innovative platforms and new technology focused on fintech is at a peak,” says Kalola, 45, who wears a second hat as head of global e-trading market structure strategy for fixed income, currencies and commodities. As part of her mission of identifying opportunities for augmenting BAML’s technology, Kalola sits on the boards of BATS Global Markets, Chi-X Global Holdings and REDI Holdings and is a board observer of data analytics company Context Relevant and messaging platform developer Symphony Communication Services. She extols the advantages of “partnering up through collective mind share, both external — on the Street — and internal.” Working collaboratively and with a portfolio of investments can contribute to the success of strategic holdings: “Sometimes clients want aggregation — to use one or two multibroker-dealer portals, not ten individual portals,” Kalola notes. The tech bug bit the 1991 Barnard College graduate (BA in global economics) when, as a junior analyst at Salomon Brothers, she wrote her first macro in Excel to automate work flow. With a JD from Georgetown University, Kalola did a stint in corporate law, then co-founded a dot-com start-up before landing at Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2001 as an assistant general counsel responsible for M&A and structuring joint ventures.

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


Related Content