The 2014 Trading Technology 40: Rishi Nangalia

23

Rishi Nangalia

Chief Executive Officer

REDI Holdings

(Previously not ranked)

In 2001, Rishi Nangalia recalls, Goldman Sachs Group’s REDI Products “felt like a start-up.” Goldman had bought the unit’s developer, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, the year before. Nangalia, a Columbia University MBA who had previously co-founded an e-trading start-up in Asia, was part of a new wave of talent working to integrate REDI with its bulge-bracket acquirer and solidify Goldman’s status as a top Wall Street technology shop. By 2011, however, the bank was rethinking its traditional, proprietary management approach and tapped Nangalia to change the business model and carry it forward as CEO. Essentially reversing the original course, Goldman last July spun out REDI Holdings and its affiliates into what Nangalia, 38, calls a mature start-up, with the established REDIplus execution management system, a multinational customer base and consortium ownership that includes Bank of America Corp., Barclays, Citadel and Goldman. “Big financial institutions are seeking new ways to innovate,” in this case outside their organizations and in a collaborative mode, Nangalia notes. The REDI remake took two years to ensure “we were self-sufficient in all departments.” That included team-building: recruiting chief technology officer Joshua Schubkegel from Bridgewater Associates and appointing Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading veteran Goutam Nadella as chief product officer. “I wouldn’t be here if not for the people in our organization,” now 130, up from 35 when the organizing began, says Nangalia.