The 2013 Tech 50: Peter Cherecwich

Since Northern Trust Corp.’s July 2011 acquisition of the Omnium hedge fund administration business from Citadel (see Tom Miglis, No. 19), the hedge fund services group has been a beehive of activity within Northern Trust Global Fund Services, headed by Peter Cherecwich. In the fourth quarter of 2012, the Chicago-based bank, now with $180 billion in assets under administration, finished linking Omnium with its custody platform, which serves $5 trillion in assets. “Where the world is going is ease of implementation, where everything is integrated into one platform,” explains Cherecwich, a 27-year veteran of asset servicing who joined Northern Trust in 2007 from State Street Corp. Equipped with the “plumbing” to meet that trend head-on, Northern Trust has begun running several hedge fund clients’ entire operations, from front office to back. In January it won a major shadow administrator mandate — a quality-control role backing up Bank of New York Mellon Corp. — for $140 billion hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates, of     Westport, Connecticut. Besides supervising Global Fund Services and Hedge Fund Services (and the latter’s CEO, R. Peter Sanchez, No. 49 last year), Cherecwich, 48, has broader management responsibilities as COO of corporate and institutional services, which accounts for all but $455 billion of Northern Trust’s custodial assets.