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The 2015 Tech 50: Lee Olesky
The Tradeweb Markets CEO jumps to No. 21 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

In 1998, Tradeweb Markets was operating a first-of-its-kind multidealer electronic marketplace for U.S. Treasury securities. The upstart then is an established, multiproduct heavyweight now, with “800 employees focused entirely on fixed-income and derivatives trading — no one else has that,” boasts Lee Olesky. A member of the Credit Suisse First Boston team that developed Tradeweb in the 1990s, the 53-year-old has been CEO since 2008, and it is, as ever, a growth company. Diversifying its original client-to-dealer business, now spanning more than 50 countries, New York–based Tradeweb, majority-owned by Thomson Reuters, has expanded into interdealer and municipal bond brokerage and is serving the financial advisory marketplace through Tradeweb Direct. It has also parlayed its over-the-counter expertise to become a leader in swap execution facilities, operating the DW SEF anonymous trading platform and TW SEF for disclosed transactions. The latter’s notional volume of $5 trillion since March 2014 is significant compared with Tradeweb’s $16 trillion total since launching derivatives trading in 2005. “We have a 50 percent market share,” notes Olesky, who was CEO of BrokerTec Europe, now part of ICAP (see Michael Spencer, No. 13), before moving to Tradeweb as its London-based president in 2002. Tradeweb draws on “years of experience to design what our customers want to use, and our extended network of relationships gives us a huge advantage.” His latest target is corporate bonds, the stronghold of MarketAxess Holdings (see Richard McVey, No. 22). “We’re not new to the credit space as a global company, but we are new in the U.S.,” Olesky says. “We have very high aspirations but recognize fully that this is a multiyear process to build out our franchise.”
See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”
![]() 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. ![]() 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group ![]() 4. Lance Uggla Markit ![]() 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock |
![]() 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg ![]() 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group ![]() 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures ![]() 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments ![]() 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group |
![]() 11. David Craig Thomson Reuters ![]() 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings ![]() 13. Michael Spencer ICAP ![]() 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. ![]() 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
![]() 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets ![]() 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. ![]() 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group ![]() 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. ![]() 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. |
![]() 21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets ![]() 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings ![]() 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings ![]() 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. ![]() 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp. |
![]() 26. John Marcante Vanguard Group ![]() 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel ![]() 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group ![]() 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse ![]() 30. Chris Corrado MSCI |
![]() 31. David Gledhill DBS Bank ![]() 32. John Bates Software AG ![]() 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz ![]() 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group ![]() 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group |
![]() 36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse ![]() 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives ![]() 38. Jim Minnick eVestment ![]() 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais ![]() 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS |
![]() 41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. ![]() 42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix ![]() 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma ![]() 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America ![]() 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite |
![]() 46. Mazy Dar OpenFin ![]() 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software ![]() 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma ![]() 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group ![]() 50. Jock Percy Perseus |