Chief Executive Officer
Markit Group
[3]
From modest beginnings as a source of credit derivative prices, London- and New York–based Markit Group is slowly but surely evolving into a top-tier financial information company, in keeping with the aims of co-founder and CEO Lance Uggla. Well, maybe not so slowly. Markit had a handful of employees when Canada-based TD Bank Group spun it out in 2003; today it has 2,300, having added 700 in just the past 12 months. Demand is fueling consistent double-digit revenue growth, says Uggla, 49, one of some 2,000 employees who own the company’s shares (as do banks and private equity investors led by General Atlantic of Greenwich, Connecticut). Having diversified into areas like indexing and trade processing while steadily adding acquisitions such as that of Canadian risk analytics company QuIC Financial Technologies in January, Markit is already “broad and deep” in its current specialties, says Uggla. “Our vision is to be among the largest and most profitable financial information services companies globally,” he adds, estimating it may take three to five years to fully get there. A key to the future, he believes, is finding “a new commercial model” that will be to finance what Facebook and Google are to the mass market.
