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The 2015 Tech 50: Michael Cooper
The CTO of BT Radianz debuts at No. 33 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.


Cloud computing has been all the rage for five or six years; by now it is less a buzzword than a mainstream component of system architectures. However, the computing utility or shared infrastructure concept had earlier incarnations, one example being Radianz, a cloud in all but name when it began life 15 years ago as a Reuters Group affiliate. Acquired by the U.K.’s BT Group in 2005, what is now BT Radianz has bridged the pre- and postcloud eras to become a critical communications backbone for the financial industry and “more than just a service provider,” says Michael Cooper, CTO of the unit and of the financial technology services group within BT Global Banking and Financial Markets. Telecommunications is the core business of £17.9 billion-in-revenue ($27.3 billion) BT, but with thousands of financial market participants and more than 400 application and service providers on Radianz — a who’s who of brokerages, data companies, order and execution management systems and trading venues — the specialized network occupies a neutral ground that brings credibility to its dealings with clients. “We not only support their plans and strategies, we also can offer insight into where the market structure is going, how regulations are evolving and how people should respond to them,” explains Cooper, 52, who after joining the original Radianz team in 2001 headed up customer solutions, created a business technology group for BT Global Financial Services and became CTO in 2010. “Arguably, we take friction out of the market by virtue of our ubiquity.” Although cloud technology “lowers barriers to entry and achieving scale,” Cooper notes, there is a downside: The same benefits can be exploited by hackers. He cochairs one of the industry committees trying to stay a step ahead of such threats, the FIX Trading Community Cyber Security Working Group.
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 |