The 2017 Tech 40: Lou Eccleston

Peter Vasiliev

July 27, 2017

2017-07-jeffrey-kutler-tech-40-28-lou-eccleston-small.jpg

< The 2017 Tech 40

28. Lou Eccleston

Chief Executive Officer

TMX Group

Last year: 27

When Lou Eccleston took over as chief executive officer of Toronto's TMX Group in 2014, he promptly began throwing words like "entrepreneurial" and "technology driven" around what had been a staid exchange-operating holding company. Eccleston set TMX — the owner of trading venues including the Toronto Stock Exchange, Montreal Exchange, and TSX Venture Exchange — on course to being a global technology-enabled services business, while seeking to reverse multiple down years on the bottom line. He had already established a reputation for being unabashed in his embrace of digital disruption in his previous role as president of McGraw Hill Financial's S&P Capital IQ, where his culture-changing efforts included the creation of an innovation hub with Google-like workspaces and amenities. At TMX, Eccleston accomplished a turnaround to what he calls "profitable growth, achieving both record revenue and earnings while continuing to pay down significant amounts of debt" in 2016. In the first quarter of this year, revenue rose 5 percent from a year earlier to $186 million, and income from operations jumped 17 percent to $81 million. "This is the strongest digital effort I have ever been involved in," says Eccleston. At age 60, he says it's full speed ahead.

The 2017 Tech 40