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

39. David Mercer
Chief Executive Officer
LMAX Exchange
PNR

At $5 trillion a day, foreign exchange is the biggest financial market, and historically the most unruly. Regulators in recent years have sent disciplinary signals, fining major banks billions of dollars for manipulation and misconduct, and a Bank for International Settlements working group has drafted a code of conduct for wholesale forex trading. David Mercer believes that in LMAX Exchange he has the industrial-strength technology and market structure to bring to currencies the liquidity, transparency, and operational integrity associated with exchange trading. A multilateral trading facility regulated by the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority, LMAX has climbed into the top ten among foreign exchange platforms and "aspires to be No. 1," CEO Mercer, 46, says.

Founded in 2010, LMAX was not an overnight success in the big-bank-dominated forex world. Mercer, a 25-year financial markets veteran formerly associated with Credit Suisse Financial Products and Credit Suisse First Boston, came in as CEO in 2011, was part of a management buyout in 2012, and then embarked on a three-year plan to reach breakeven while building out the global infrastructure that currently serves banks, funds, proprietary traders, and other customers in more than 90 countries. Rising to prominence in London's start-up scene — LMAX was a Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 winner in 2015 and 2016 — the company established data centers in the key trading hubs of London, Tokyo, and, as of September 2016, New York. It has about 110 employees, turned a profit last year, "and now it's all about distribution," Mercer says.

The technology is homegrown; Mercer notes that 70 percent of LMAX's spending and half its head count are tech-related. To avoid the hazards of aging systems and to maintain maximum reliability, "we rewrite a third of our code every year and release new software every two weeks," he says.

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets Private Markets Investment Outlook Q2 2025: Opportunities Amid Uncertainty Sponsored by Schroders Capital May 1, 2025 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