Trading Technology 30: Daniel Friel

Daniel Friel
No. 16
Chief Information Officer
International Securities Exchange

Daniel Friel

Daniel Friel

Nearly 12 years after International Securities Exchange opened the first all-electronic options market in the U.S., two members of the founding team, David Krell and Gary Katz, are still on board as, respectively, chairman and CEO. Without the technology team led by CIO Daniel Friel, one of its first ten hires back in 1999, ISE would not be where it is today: tops in equity options and, since 2007, part of Deutsche Börse Group’s Eurex derivatives subsidiary. Friel had previously worked for Securities Industry Automation Corp., the New York Stock Exchange–American Stock Exchange joint technology venture, and he knew Krell and Katz from NYSE’s options business. He believed their plan for ISE “had a good chance for success. They needed somebody to make the technology work.” Friel, 56, and his workforce of 130 — two thirds of ISE’s total — have since ushered the market through the eras of millisecond and microsecond latency, even as “messages are escalating at an astronomical rate.” Since Optimise, the unified Deutsche Börse trading platform, was completed in July after three years in development, ISE went into rapid-upgrade mode, issuing new releases every two months. “This industry changes quickly,” says Friel. “We can’t ever lag behind.”

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