< Wall Street's Nerds: The World's Most Powerful Trading Executives

10. Raj Mahajan
Co-head of Global Execution Services
Goldman Sachs Group
Last year: 9

Two years ago Raj Mahajan came into Goldman Sachs Group as a partner. That was a sign of the firm's regard for Mahajan and his trading technology background as he took on the role of global head of equities electronic execution services. A year ago he was named co-head of global execution services; he told Reuters at the time that "simply put, we want to deliver the best execution quality to our clients, which is tantamount to saying we need the best technology."

Mahajan, 44, had worked as an analyst at Goldman early in his career, and he returned as a successful technologist and entrepreneur. In 2000 he co-founded — with former Goldman chief information officer and now CFO-designate R. Martin Chavez — Kiodex, a developer of commodity-trading systems. SunGard Data Systems bought the start-up in 2004, and Mahajan went with it, rising over eight years with SunGard to president of its global trading business. In 2012 he became CEO of Allston Trading, a high frequency firm based in Chicago. When Goldman hired him and brought him back to New York in 2015, it described him in a memo as "bringing extensive experience in electronic trading, market structure, technology, and entrepreneurship to our rapidly growing electronic execution franchise. He will be responsible for delivering innovative electronic execution solutions to global clients across equity products worldwide."

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 5, 2025 4. Brad Levy MarkitSERV 5. Dan Keegan Citi

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

26. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 27. Anton Katz & Stephen Mock AQR Capital Management 28. Donal Byrne Corvil 29. Stu Taylor Algomi 30. Alfred Eskandar Portware

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