New derivatives regulations vexed financial firms not just because of their operational and compliance burdens but because regulators were slow to issue final rules, causing business plans and related systems changes to be put on hold. It takes a flexible computer architecture to weather such uncertainty and be prepared to pounce on opportunities when they emerge, and Steven O’Hanlon began to crack that code in 2004. Promoted that year to president and COO of New York–based quantitative analytics company Numerix after two years as head of sales, marketing and support, O’Hanlon initiated “a rewrite of the entire underlying platform.” So there were no legacy systems to bog Numerix down as demand for derivatives capabilities soared, particularly after the financial crisis hit. “We had the ability to price any instrument,” says O’Hanlon, 56, president and CEO of the 220-employee, 700-customer organization since February 2013. Postcrisis “we could leverage our infrastructure and go upstream into the risk marketplace.” Drawing on enterprise software and start-up experience, O’Hanlon boosted sales with a partnership strategy: Numerix’s technology is embedded in offerings by Bloomberg, S&P Capital IQ and Thomson Reuters, to name a few. Flexibility is a mantra for O’Hanlon and evident in Numerix’s reliance on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud services and in the CrossAsset Server, released last year and built for a wide range of pricing and risk calculations.
1  | 1  | 3  | 4  | 5  |
| Thomas Secunda Bloomberg | Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange | Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. | Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments | Lance Uggla Markit |
6  | 7  | 8  | 9  | 10  |
| Robert Goldstein BlackRock | David Craig Thomson Reuters | Phupinder Gill CME Group | Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group | R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
11  | 12  | 13  | 14  | 15  |
| Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures | Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse | Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings | Michael Spencer ICAP | Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. |
16  | 17  | 18  | 19  | 20  |
| Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets | Dominique Cerutti Euronext | Ron Levi GFI Group | Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group | Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
21  | 22  | 23  | 24  | 25  |
| Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ | Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets | Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings | Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings | Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group |
26  | 27  | 28  | 29  | 30  |
| Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. | Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. | Peter Carr Morgan Stanley | Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse | Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. |
31  | 32  | 33  | 34  | 35  |
| David Gershon SuperDerivatives | Chris Corrado MSCI | Joseph Squeri Citadel | Tanuja Randery BT Global Services | John Bates Software AG |
36  | 37  | 38  | 39  | 40  |
| Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group | David Gledhill DBS Bank | Simon Garland Kx Systems | Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab | Jeff Parker EidoSearch |
41  | 42  | 43  | 44  | 45  |
| Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank | Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates | Tyler Kim MaplesFS | Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. | Jim Minnick eVestment |
46  | 47  | 48  | 49  | 50  |
| Steven O’Hanlon Numerix | Sebastián Ceria Axioma | Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute | Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners | Mas Nakachi OpenGamma |