For Aquis Exchange, launched in 2013 as a pan-European challenger to leading incumbents such as Bats Global Markets and London Stock Exchange Group, 2016 was a "transformational year," says CEO Alasdair Haynes. London-based Aquis, which had differentiated itself from the start with subscription pricing, in February 2016 imposed a rule prohibiting "aggressive, non-client proprietary trading." That contributed to a surge in the exchange's average daily value — 79 percent year-over-year in October — with market shares in some top stocks exceeding 6 percent.
"It takes three to four years to get these businesses going," says Haynes, 57, who was CEO of Chi-X Europe before Bats acquired it in 2011. He has formed a separate division for Aquis Technologies. Its turnkey exchange system has been bought by the A2X market in South Africa, and Haynes says that its real-time trade and order surveillance system is meeting healthy demand from organizations coping with the European Market Abuse Regulation and MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) II.
 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 |