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The 2017 Trading Tech 40: Bradley Peterson

3. Bradley Peterson
Chief Information Officer
Nasdaq
Last year: 5

Electronic stock quotes and trading methods were building blocks of Nasdaq as early as the 1970s. Today the global exchange operator prides itself on its technology, something it has in common with stalwarts like Alphabet (Google), Apple, and Microsoft that are listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Senior management has the pedigree. Chair Robert Greifeld, before serving as CEO from 2003 through 2016, was a financial technology entrepreneur and a senior executive of SunGard Data Systems. Adena Friedman, who started as an intern in 1993 and has had a hand in many of Nasdaq's growth initiatives and acquisitions, took over as CEO in January. In chief information officer Bradley Peterson, the company has leading- and bleeding-edge street cred.

A former CIO at eBay and Charles Schwab Corp. who took the executive vice president–level post at Nasdaq in 2013, Peterson regularly visits Silicon Valley, where he has a home and maintains close ties with the venture capitalists of Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and other firms that open doors to emerging technology and innovation. A technological engine in itself, Nasdaq has development centers in Boston, New York, Denver, the San Francisco area; Sydney; Bangalore, India; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Stockholm. "From an operational standpoint, we can follow the sun," keeping R&D teams operating around the clock, Peterson, 57, explains. "And we can tap into innovation," which likewise is well dispersed around the globe.

A measurable, bottom-line impact is Nasdaq Market Technology, a business unit headed by EVP Lars Ottersgård, which has supplied systems to more than 85 marketplaces in 50 countries. It accounted for $275 million of Nasdaq's $2.3 billion in total revenue last year and expanded relationships with the likes of the Australian Securities Exchange, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, and Switzerland's SIX Group. Meanwhile, Nasdaq unveiled a new modular architecture, the Financial Framework, to make it easier to add components and take advantage of blockchain, machine learning, and other advances. Nasdaq is in the forefront of financial industry experimentation with blockchain. Its San Francisco–based partner, Chain, has been integrated into the Financial Framework, and Peterson says, "We are open and agnostic with respect to Ethereum, Hyperledger, and other frameworks that emerge." Nasdaq has worked with its Tallinn exchange and the government of Estonia to record electronic proxy votes securely on the blockchain.


The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager
BlackRock
2. Chris Isaacson
Bats Global Markets
3. Bradley Peterson
Nasdaq
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

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