Trading Technology 30: Jay Spencer

Jay Spencer
No. 18
Chief Technology Officer
Tradeweb Markets

Jay Spencer

Jay Spencer

Tradeweb Markets was an early entrant into institutional electronic trading, beginning in 1998 with U.S. Treasuries. That original product set is still posting annual volume growth above 20 percent. New York–based Tradeweb, owned by Thomson Reuters and ten dealer banks, now handles nearly 30 products, among them European government bonds, whose volume increased 59 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, and interest rate derivatives, whose volume doubled. Yet the business is even more diversified — consisting also of Tradeweb Retail for financial advisers and traders, and the Dealerweb interdealer brokerage division — and so is the infrastructure overseen by CTO Jay Spencer. “Sustained growth fueled by the markets’ volatility since 2008,” says the 60-year-old Spencer, defines the technology mission “to build out new products on all three platforms.” Formerly global chief information officer at interdealer giant ICAP and founding CTO of BrokerTec Global — an e-trading pioneer that ICAP acquired in 2003 — Spencer joined Tradeweb in February 2008, reuniting with former BrokerTec president and current Tradeweb CEO Lee Olesky. Later in ’08, Tradeweb started Dealerweb by acquiring New York boutique Hilliard Farber & Co. That was a warm-up for another top technology integration priority: the acquisition in October of Garden City, New York–based Rafferty Capital Markets.

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