The 2013 Tech 50: Lee Olesky

In 1998, executing a business plan approved at Credit Suisse First Boston two years earlier, Tradeweb Markets became the first multidealer online trading network for U.S. Treasury securities. Fifteen years and more than 20 additional fixed-income and derivatives products later, under controlling shareholder Thomson Reuters (see David Craig, No. 10), Tradeweb is a global force in institutional trading, with business-line extensions in interdealer and retail brokering. CEO Lee Olesky has been an influential voice in shaping the reforms sweeping the over-the-counter markets, while leading Tradeweb’s efforts to capitalize on the resulting opportunities. “The gun has gone off in terms of regulatory change,” says the 51-year-old, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s technology advisory committee, who has been Tradeweb’s CEO since 2008 and was president for six years before that. “But to be fair, we’ve been focused on these issues for years. We started derivatives in 2005 and, of course, the business in the 1990s.” A Tradeweb co-founder while at CSFB, Olesky was subsequently founder and CEO of another joint venture, BrokerTec Global, which ICAP acquired in 2002. In light of intensifying e-trading competition and looming regulations, Olesky perceives “an unprecedented drive for efficiency and to get this business done in an electronic environment. That’s our sweet spot.”