The 2014 Tech 50: R. Martin Chavez

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

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R. Martin Chavez

Chief Information Officer

Goldman Sachs Group

[PNR]

When Goldman Sachs Group’s CIO baton passed last September from the retiring Steven Scopellite (No. 6 in 2013) to R. Martin Chavez, the job got bigger. In addition to 8,000 technology division engineers, Chavez took on 2,000 others inside such revenue-producing divisions as securities, investment banking and asset management. The result, says the 50-year-old, is “a single leadership and accountability point,” with the division heads sharing tech oversight. With a BS in biochemistry and a master’s in computer science from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in medical information sciences from Stanford University, Chavez has bounced between Wall Street and the start-up world. He co-founded Quorum Software Systems in San Francisco, serving as CTO from 1989 to ’93, then worked as a senior energy strategist at Goldman for four years and as global head of energy derivatives at Credit Suisse Financial Products for three. Next he was CEO of Kiodex, a New York risk management systems firm that SunGard Data Systems bought in 2004. He returned to Goldman in 2005 and was co-COO of equities before becoming CIO. Thanks to the concurrent trends of open-source development and cloud computing, Chavez says, “we can do something we couldn’t do before — extend our platform out to clients.” When weighing software options, “we now have a preference for download, build, buy,” in that order. Much of the software required for the new regulatory environment does not exist, he says, and will have to be built.

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