After yet another record-shattering year, executives of the fixed-income trading, data, and posttrade services provider MarketAxess Holdings aren't conceding any limits to the company's growth potential — or the power of its technology. In business since 2000, publicly held since 2004, and with Nick Themelis as chief information officer since 2005, MarketAxess' electronic platform claimed a 17.2 percent share of U.S. high-grade corporate bond trading in 2016's fourth quarter, up from 15.1 percent a year earlier. Its total global, full-year trading volume of $1.3 trillion was 33.7 percent higher than in 2015, while revenue climbed 22 percent to $369.9 million, and pretax income rose 29.5 percent to $191 million.
Helping to fuel that success, and accounting for 13 percent of trading volume, is one of the most talked about bond market innovations: the Open Trading protocol, which MarketAxess introduced in 2012 and is currently approaching $1 billion in daily volume after 86 percent growth last year. "Open Trading was a response to the market's liquidity problems," Themelis, 53, explains. "We connect every point of liquidity," buy-side and sell-side, in a so-called all-to-all trading pool that in 2016 saved liquidity takers an estimated $100 million-plus in transaction costs.
Themelis, a former Barclays Capital CIO for North America and global head of fixed-income technology, believes it will be hard for a competitor to match MarketAxess' first-mover advantage, notably its connected community of more than 1,100 buy- and sell-side participants that is responsible for Open Trading's momentum. Those users are requesting that the protocol be extended into municipal bonds and other asset classes.
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 6. Glenn Lesko Bloomberg Tradebook  7. Bryan Durkin CME Group  8. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange  9. Mike Blum KCG Holdings  10. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group |
 11. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional  12. Nick Themelis MarketAxess Holdings  13. Jenny Knott NEX Optimisation  14. Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets  15. Rob Park IEX Group |
 16. Bill Chow & Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing  17. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT  18. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities  19. Eric Noll Convergex  20. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology |
 21. Tyler Moeller & Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology  22. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange  23. Gaurav Suri Arcesium  24. Manoj Narang Mana Partners  25. Michael Chin & Neill Penney Thomson Reuters |
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 31. Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority  32. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group  33. Peter Maragos Dash Financial  34. John Fawcett Quantopian  35. Donald Ross III PDQ Enterprises |
 36. Jennifer Nayar Vela Trading Technologies  37. Dan Raju Tradier  38. Susan Estes OpenDoor Trading  39. David Mercer LMAX Exchange  40. Oki Matsumoto Monex Group |
