< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow
31
Alasdair Haynes
Chief Executive Officer
Aquis Exchange
Last year: 31
On November 26, 2014, the first anniversary of its launch date, Aquis Exchange tallied its progress: The pan-European upstart was trading stocks on 12 markets, up from three at its inception; it had suffered no outages; and its round-trip messaging latency of 23 milliseconds was said to be the lowest in Europe. With daily volumes exceeding those of some of Europe’s smaller national exchanges, “we are not so minute,” says CEO Alasdair Haynes. An auspicious start, but Haynes has much bigger aspirations for London-based Aquis — and, as with his past ventures, they challenge convention. “I like to change things as a positive disrupter,” says the 55-year-old. Heading Investment Technology Group’s international business from 1998 to 2009, Haynes brought trade-crossing services to Europe. “People laughed at first,” he recalls; today crossing is an institutional trading mainstay. He dealt with similar skepticism as CEO of Chi-X Europe until that company cut into established exchanges’ market shares and was acquired by BATS Global Markets in 2011. “Change takes time. We are prepared for a long fight and are winning,” says Haynes, convinced that Aquis’s subscription pricing strategy will attract a more-than-critical mass of investment banks — and their liquidity. Eight of the top 12 banks have signed on, and “getting the other four and the second tier on board” is a goal for 2015. Haynes anticipates a further payoff from licensing Aquis’s technology to exchanges and institutions gearing up for a new wave of trading regulations.
The 2015 Trading Technology 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Kevin Kometer CME Group | Richard Prager BlackRock | Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg Tradebook | Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings | Charles Vice Intercontinental Exchange |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets | Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group | Brad Levy MarkitSERV | Dan Keegan Citi | Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Gerard Beatty Goldman Sachs Group | Gerald O’Connell CBOE Holdings | Brenda Hoffman TMX Group | Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets | Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch | Gil Mandelzis EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP) | Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority | Jerry Dobner GFI Group | Michael Liberman BlueMountain Capital Management |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing | Jamie Selway Investment Technology Group | Brad Katsuyama IEX Group | John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT | Jamil Nazarali Citadel Execution Services |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange | Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy Broadway Technology | Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings | Manoj Narang Tradeworx, Thesys Technologies | Oki Matsumoto Monex Group |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange | Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology | Stu Taylor Algomi | Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado BM&FBovespa | Tal Cohen Chi-X Global Holdings |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Donal Byrne Corvil | R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group | Alfred Eskandar Portware | Richard Korhammer SR Labs | Hazem Dawani OptionsCity Software |
