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Looking for executives who aren’t settling for single-digit growth? Whose business activities, from transaction volumes to revenues, are climbing at 50, 60, even 100 percent annual rates? Then consider the technology leaders and innovators in Institutional Investor‘s sixth annual Online Finance 30 ranking.
They’re not partying like it’s 1999, by any means. They are, for the most part, toughened veterans running what have become mature business lines for some of the world’s biggest financial institutions. Organizations ranging from BNP Paribas and Nordea in the West to ICICI Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in the fast-emerging East are tapping into their customers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for new and improved online services.
Hans Verkoren tops the list. ING Direct, the retail subsidiary of Amsterdam-based ING Group that he first put on the Internet in 1998, increased its customer total 35 percent last year, to 11.5 million, and its profits soared 186 percent as it solidified its place as a global financial leader and innovator.
Jean-François Théodore (No. 2), CEO of the Euronext exchange, has had to contend with a slowdown in trading and revenues. But Euronext’s technology makes it a formidable contender to acquire the London Stock Exchange, and it enjoys some offsetting pockets of growth: Listing fees, for example, rose 44 percent in the first nine months of 2004.
Where once-rampant growth has slowed to single digits, as at Gianluca Garbi’s EuroMTS fixed-income marketplace, there’s always the potential for a profitable exit. Garbi (No. 4) has Goldman, Sachs & Co. exploring possible deals while he stokes the fires of his subsidiary online service BondVision, which grew 93 percent last year. At Thomson TradeWeb, president Lee Olesky (No. 20) saw European commercial paper volumes rise 150 percent and covered bonds 115 percent.
For the most staggering potential of all, look to Asia. Jiang Jianqing (No. 16) at China’s ICBC has less than 10 percent of his customers online -- but that total rose 29 percent last year, to 9.7 million. K.V. Kamath (No. 17) already has a majority of his 10 million customers online at India’s ICICI, not to mention boom-time bravado. Boasts Kamath, “In any ball game, when you see the ball early, you are going to play it right.”
The Online 30 profiles were compiled under the direction of Global Technology and Banking Editor Jeffrey Kutler and written by Kutler, European Editor Tom Buerkle, Hong Kong Bureau Chief Kevin Hamlin, Senior Editors Steven Brull and Andrew Capon, Staff Writer David Lanchner, Senior Contributing Editor Charles Smith and Contributors Jane Adams, Alison Langley, Craig Mellow, Steven Ribet and Assif Shameen.
