The 2013 Tech 50: Michael Bodson

His company is developing a system to ‘see across venues’ and ‘send warning signals to clearing firms about unusual activity,’ says the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s CEO.

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Christopher Elston

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Michael Bodson
President and Chief Executive Officer
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
Last year: 21

August 1, 2012, was memorable not only because “it was my first day without the previous CEO present,” recalls Michael Bodson, who had been COO of New York–based Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. since October 2010 and transitioned to the top job upon Donald Donahue’s retirement. That same morning errant software at Knight Capital Group set off a chain of events that raised the specter of flash crash redux. From the standpoint of  D TCC, the posttrade infrastructure operator that processed $1.6 quadrillion worth of securities transactions last year, the problem was contained and stabilized within the New York Stock Exchange, says Bodson, 55, a former senior operations executive at Morgan Stanley who joined DTCC in 2007 as head of business management and strategy. To help prevent future or more widespread breakdowns, DTCC, as a unique “point of aggregation,” is developing a system to “see across venues” and “send warning signals to clearing firms about unusual activity,” Bodson says. Last year DTCC successfully worked through another operational nightmare, Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out its primary Manhattan data center. (Backup sites kicked in without a hitch.) Bodson notes that infrastructure utilities have “fragmented” as markets have grown more complex. DTCC’s responses include the pending merger of its EuroCCP subsidiary with rival European Multilateral Clearing Facility and a joint collateral-processing service with Euroclear.



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