This content is from: Portfolio
The 2015 Tech 50: Robert Goldstein
The BlackRock COO jumps to No. 5 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.
Robert Goldstein has been COO of BlackRock since July 2014. At the same time, he remains global head of BlackRock Solutions, the technology arm of the money management colossus, which as of March 31 had $4.8 trillion in assets. Goldstein was with that risk-focused systems business at its launch in 1999, five years after he joined the New York–based firm with an economics degree from Binghamton University, and has led it since 2009. Last year the unit generated $635 million in revenue, 10 percent more than in 2013 (whereas BlackRock’s revenue as a whole rose 9 percent, to $11.1 billion). Yet for futuristic insights, this 41-year-old leader among financial technology luminaries observes his 12- and 13-year-old children and their comfort level with programs like Google Docs, designed for simultaneous collaboration by teams of users. “In the workplace five people don’t work on one document at once — I work on it tonight, I e-mail it to you, and so on,” he says. The contrast tells him that “the next generation will think differently about how existing technology winds up being used and will think differently about investing, servicing clients, communicating and managing.” Changing technologies and behaviors are very much here-and-now issues for Goldstein. Big data, for one, is “beyond anything we’ve seen, and it’s going to continue to get bigger,” he says. “It will create a different expectation for what it means to do your job. Being a data scientist will wind up being part of everyone’s job.” In the immediate quest to improve fixed-income liquidity, BlackRock Solutions’ buy-side customer base leverages its Aladdin network to achieve greater transparency across multiple venues.
See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”
 1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  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 |