Deal making is as integral to the evolution of the financial technology industry as the technologies themselves, and Kenneth Marlin has been in the thick of it since the 1980s. The managing partner of New York–based Marlin & Associates boasts a 90 percent close rate, exhibiting a relentlessness that he says was shaped by a decade in the U.S. Marine Corps. “We just keep going,” says the University of California, Los Angeles, MBA and author of Seize the High Ground: A Marine Corps Way to Win on Wall Street, due from St. Martin’s Press next year. During ten years at Dun & Bradstreet, when it owned the likes of Interactive Data Corp. and Moody’s Investors Service, Marlin led more than 60 transactions. In the 1990s he was CEO of both Swiss-owned market data company Telekurs (North America) and spin-off Telesphere Corp. He began a stint with private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in 1999 and three years later formed his own investment banking boutique. Marlin & Associates has advised on more than 200 deals, including the April acquisition of capital markets data company Ipreo Holdings by Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs Group’s merchant banking division. Ever the fintech optimist, Marlin notes that “a bank might have 200 software vendors. There are opportunities for those who can make these products work together like a more holistic solution.”
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 |