Brian Conroy
No. 8
President
Fidelity Capital Markets
The prelude to Brian Conroy’s quarter century in financial services was Ivy League, but not in the typical way. His Dartmouth College bachelor’s degree was in religion, and he worked as an assistant football coach at Princeton University before starting out in equities at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1987. By the time Conroy joined Boston-based Fidelity Investments in 2005, he had worked in senior positions at J.P. Morgan & Co. and ABN Amro Bank, and had been COO of Sigma Capital in New York and director of execution trading at SAC Capital Management in Stamford, Connecticut. He headed global equity trading for Fidelity Management & Research Co. before being named president of the institutional trading arm, Fidelity Capital Markets, last March. Overseeing equity volume of 600 million shares per day, he has been pushing algorithm development: In the third quarter usage of liquidity-seeking algorithms increased 136 percent year-over-year. Through September 2011 the unit had added 60 institutional equity clients to its combination of high-touch advisory services and high-tech proficiency. “The bad news is that less than 30 percent of New York Stock Exchange–listed securities trade on the NYSE, making it all very confusing,” says Conroy, 47. “The good news is that the U.S. equity markets are among the most efficient and least costly in the world.”
