This content is from: Portfolio

The 2015 Tech 50: Sebastián Ceria

The Axioma CEO jumps to No. 43 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

43
Sebastián Ceria
Chief Executive Officer
Axioma

Corporations consuming technology services are not the only ones benefiting from the cost, capacity and flexibility benefits of cloud computing. It is also a boon to developers and suppliers of quantitative software like Axioma. CEO Sebastián Ceria says it is an essential example of “technological modernity,” without which his New York–based portfolio systems and analytics shop would be having a very hard time satisfying its global customer base of 200 financial institutions, including 12 of the top 20 asset managers. “The cloud is a gigantic data center for which we don’t pay fixed costs,” explains Ceria, a Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. in operations research who started Axioma in 1998 as a mathematical modeling consulting firm and in 2001 veered into software vending, specializing in portfolio optimization. Five years later Axioma moved into the risk management systems market, and by relying on new-generation technological advances — automated programming and data management tools, as well as the highly scalable cloud — it could more readily invest in the intellectual property, organizational agility and client focus that Ceria believes define Axioma’s competitive and innovative edge. “We had the advantage of coming into the market later,” the 50-year-old admits. Incumbent rivals in the risk software business, in common with many banks, were “stuck with ten- to 15-year-old systems and couldn’t change fast enough,” he says. “That creates opportunities for companies like ours.” Privately held Axioma’s top-line revenue is growing 20 percent annually, Ceria says, and its employee count, now 140, is increasing at an even faster clip.

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


The 2015 Tech 50

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

Related Content