But the more he learned, the more he liked. Last month Marks joined Belzberg - as its president. Working with founder and CEO Sidney Belzberg, a distant cousin of the billionaire Belzberg clan, Marks, 39, aims to bring the eight-year-old company into the forefront of the global electronic trading movement. “All the research I’ve been doing about markets and exchanges tells me that we’re at the start of a new era,” says Marks, a veteran financial services analyst who in 1996 became one of the first to focus on the niche that came to be called e-finance. “As physical location becomes irrelevant, the way that participants connect with the markets is outdated. Belzberg is already a leader in technology that can seamlessly cross geographical boundaries and asset classes,” he says. With fewer than 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales, Belzberg is trying to muscle into a crowded institutional technology field that includes Sweden’s OM, Reuters Group and SunGard Data Systems. But Marks says that it’s no disadvantage to be perceived as an upstart. “This is a high-stakes race that is going to play out over three to four years,” he states. “The field is wide open.”
