

With financial support and other encouragement from the city-state government and central bank, Singapore has established itself as a hub of financial-technology innovation rivaling those of the U.K. and U.S. Even before the fintech boom of the last several years — at least since David Gledhill became head of group technology and operations in 2008 — DBS Bank was investing aggressively in automation to serve a highly mobile and tech-literate customer base across 18 markets, six of them considered priorities: China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the home base of Singapore. Today the bank, with 482 billion Singapore dollars ($354 billion) in assets, calls itself "digital to the core" and aspires to be, as stated in its most recent annual report, "a 22,000-person startup" (that being its total number of employees). Out of 7 million consumer banking and wealth management customers, more than 3 million are banking on the Internet and 2.2 million using mobile devices. Gledhill, 55, a Briton and former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive who is now DBS's group chief information officer, oversees 10,000 professionals (about 85 percent are on staff; the rest are vendors and contractors). In February the group announced plans to recruit 100 developers skilled in big data, machine learning, and other disruptive technologies in a hackathon competition dubbed Hack2Hire. The bank also nurtures young talent through the UNI.CORN internship program, which, now in its second year, fielded more than 1,000 applications for 24 spots.
![]() 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. ![]() 3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock ![]() 4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange ![]() 5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit |
![]() 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg ![]() 7. David Craig Thomson Reuters ![]() 8. Michael Spencer NEX Group ![]() 9. Don Callahan Citigroup ![]() 10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group |
![]() 11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. ![]() 12. Terrence Duffy CME Group ![]() 13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing ![]() 14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments ![]() 15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings |
![]() 16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp. ![]() 17. Steven Lieblich Citadel ![]() 18. David Rutter R3CEV ![]() 19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings ![]() 20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments |
![]() 21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group ![]() 22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets ![]() 23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings ![]() 24. David Gledhill DBS Bank ![]() 25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings |
![]() 26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. ![]() 27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies ![]() 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group ![]() 29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp. ![]() 30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence |
![]() 31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group ![]() 32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management ![]() 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services ![]() 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix ![]() 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma |
![]() 36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems ![]() 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS ![]() 38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz ![]() 39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions ![]() 40. Jim Minnick eVestment |