< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud
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David Gershon
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
SuperDerivatives
Last year: 32
SuperDerivatives has come a long way in the 14 years since David Gershon, a physicist and an expert in exotic foreign exchange options, left Barclays Capital to develop a web-based valuation service. It may seem modest in retrospect, but price transparency in forex options, the first asset class he tackled, was a disruptive innovation that London-based SuperDerivatives would subsequently replicate in interest rate and commodity products on its journey to becoming a derivatives-oriented data, technology and trading platform positioned as a rival to none other than Bloomberg. Certainly not alone among sellers of technology and services to financial firms, Gershon, 49, is keenly aware of the industry’s “continuous path to cost-cutting” since the crisis of 2008. “Bloomberg terminals for everybody is really a luxury they can’t afford,” Gershon reasons. He predicts that with his and others’ cloud-based technology providing a lower-cost, efficient data-delivery alternative, “five years from now, the landscape of market data terminals will be dramatically different.” SuperDerivatives’ DGX market data platform has surpassed 100,000 users, and an extension announced last October, DGX Direct, streams real-time information on cash and derivatives instruments straight into users’ systems. In May the company’s multibank, multiasset trade execution platform, SDeX, went live, with at least 30 banks committed to providing prices.
The 2014 Tech 50Click name to view ranking profile.
| 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Thomas Secunda Bloomberg | Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange | Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. | Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments | Lance Uggla Markit |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Robert Goldstein BlackRock | David Craig Thomson Reuters | Phupinder Gill CME Group | Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group | R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures | Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse | Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings | Michael Spencer ICAP | Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets | Dominique Cerutti Euronext | Ron Levi GFI Group | Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group | Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ | Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets | Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings | Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings | Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. | Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. | Peter Carr Morgan Stanley | Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse | Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| David Gershon SuperDerivatives | Chris Corrado MSCI | Joseph Squeri Citadel | Tanuja Randery BT Global Services | John Bates Software AG |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group | David Gledhill DBS Bank | Simon Garland Kx Systems | Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab | Jeff Parker EidoSearch |
| 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 |
| Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank | Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates | Tyler Kim MaplesFS | Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. | Jim Minnick eVestment |
| 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 |
| Steven O’Hanlon Numerix | Sebastián Ceria Axioma | Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute | Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners | Mas Nakachi OpenGamma |
