The 2015 Tech 50: Jock Percy

The Perseus CEO debuts at No. 50 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

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< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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50
Jock Percy
Chief Executive Officer
Perseus
PNR

In 2010, its first year of operation, Perseus was a boutique, serving a handful of customers who had caught on to a bespoke, managed telecommunications service model that may have been slightly ahead of its time. The following year, recalls founder and CEO Jock Percy, proprietary traders started climbing aboard, drawn to the LiquidPath network’s low latency and market-access connectivity. A steady stream of exchanges, investment banks and hedge funds — and a small but growing number of media, e-commerce and gaming companies — followed. If Perseus, which has its headquarters in New York, hadn’t quite established itself as a Wall Street name, that changed in April, when Goldman Sachs Group bought a minority stake for $20.5 million. It was more than just an image booster, says Percy, 41, who placed so much stock in the power of his brand that he dropped “Telecom” from the company’s name some months before. The funding will enable Perseus to complete a 28-location expansion of LiquidPath in one year, instead of the original plan for five years. Three cities added in the first quarter — Johannesburg, Istanbul and Santiago — are representative of Perseus’ global reach. Percy says his main competition is do-it-yourself networking, which is increasingly ripe for outsourcing as firms come to the conclusion that their competitive advantages lie elsewhere. With a Ph.D. in political economies from the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, Percy has an intellectual and professional fascination with Bitcoin. He announced early last year that Perseus would accept Bitcoin payments. In May 2014 the company launched a digital currency initiative, offering its “Wall Street–grade” infrastructure as an alternative to Mt. Gox and other platforms that did not serve Bitcoin well.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”


The 2015 Tech 50

Sponsored

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1. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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2. Catherine Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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3. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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4. Lance Uggla
Markit

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5. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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6. Shawn Edwards &
Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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7. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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8. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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9. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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10. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq OMX Group

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11. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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12. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Christopher Perretta
State Street Corp.

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18. Antoine Shagoury
London Stock Exchange Group

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19. Kevin Rhein
Wells Fargo & Co.

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20. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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21. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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22. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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23. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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24. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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25. Frank Bisignano
First Data Corp.

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26. John Marcante
Vanguard Group

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27. Joseph Squeri
Citadel

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28. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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29. Claude Honegger
Credit Suisse

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30. Chris Corrado
MSCI

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31. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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32. John Bates
Software AG

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33. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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34. Gary Scholten
Principal Financial Group

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35. Sunil Hirani
trueEX Group

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36. Hauke Stars
Deutsche BÖrse

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37. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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38. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais

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40. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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41. Jim McGuire
Charles Schwab Corp.

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42. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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43. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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44. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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45. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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46. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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47. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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48. Mas Nakachi
OpenGamma

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49. John Lehner
BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group

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50. Jock Percy
Perseus


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