The 2014 Tech 50: Steven O’Hanlon

< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

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Steven O’Hanlon

President and Chief Executive Officer

Numerix

(PNR)

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.

The 2014 Tech 50

1 Dave Cross	1	3 IAN CURCIO 2011	4 FayFoto/Boston	5 Teri Pengilley
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8 Photographer:Charlie Simokaitis	9	10 Mark McQueen
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 Christopher Elston
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18 Todd Plitt	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 Larry Lettera/ Camera 1	22	23	24 XT	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 Production	27 Wayne R. Martin	28	29 Thorsten Jansen	30 Adam B. Auel
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 Paul Elledge	34	35 Stephen Brashear
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39 Photo Credit: Kevin Irby	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42 Jeff Smith Photo	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 tomohisa ichiki	49 David Poultney	50 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma