The 2017 Trading Tech 40: Michael Chin and Neill Penney

< Wall Street’s Nerds: The World’s Most Powerful Trading Executives

25. Michael Chin & Neill Penney
Co-heads of Trading
Thomson Reuters
PNR

Thomson Reuters’ network spans the globe and touches all asset classes. More than 2,000 customer sites around the world use the company’s enterprise platform to support their trading infrastructure. Thomson Reuters data is used to price more than $3 trillion in assets every day. Yet co-head of trading Neill Penney says, “We can no longer be all things to all people in the rapidly evolving marketplace.” Although Thomson Reuters is not averse to expanding its portfolio when it makes strategic sense — in January it completed the acquisition of REDI Holdings, a major player in execution management systems — Penney, 46, and his counterpart, Michael Chin, 50, emphasize partnerships with other innovators. They announced deals last year with, for example, OptionsCity Software for an app enabling commodity options and futures orders to be executed on the Thomson Reuters Eikon platform, and with BestX for foreign exchange transaction cost analysis. “Our open platform approach means we are able to connect BestX with our FXall and FX Trading platforms, bringing our customers improved capabilities while eliminating the integration work they would otherwise have to perform themselves,” Penney said at the time. Explains Chin, “We’re committed to developing our own solutions and inviting the best innovators into our ecosystem.” The result is “unique provider content sets” that may include market data, news, and analytics.

With a mathematics degree from the University of Oxford, Penney worked at FXall and later rose to European head of fixed-income e-trading strategy at Morgan Stanley before joining Thomson Reuters in 2013. Chin, who has an information decision systems degree from Carnegie Mellon University, was previously president and CEO, respectively, of trading technology companies TradingScreen and Mantara and was Thomson Reuters’ global head of equities. Chin says that the company will be investing in REDI, which serves 3,800 traders worldwide, to meet buy-side needs for “truly open, broker-neutral trading systems.”

The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq 4. Brad Levy MarkitSERV 5. Dan Keegan Citi

6. Glenn Lesko Bloomberg Tradebook 7. Bryan Durkin CME Group 8. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange 9. Mike Blum KCG Holdings 10. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group

11. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional 12. Nick Themelis MarketAxess Holdings 13. Jenny Knott NEX Optimisation 14. Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets 15. Rob Park IEX Group

16. Bill Chow & Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 17. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT 18. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities 19. Eric Noll Convergex 20. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology

21. Tyler Moeller & Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology 22. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange 23. Gaurav Suri Arcesium 24. Manoj Narang Mana Partners 25. Michael Chin & Neill Penney Thomson Reuters

26. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 27. Anton Katz & Stephen Mock AQR Capital Management 28. Donal Byrne Corvil 29. Stu Taylor Algomi 30. Alfred Eskandar Portware

31. Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority 32. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group 33. Peter Maragos Dash Financial 34. John Fawcett Quantopian 35. Donald Ross III PDQ Enterprises

36. Jennifer Nayar Vela Trading Technologies 37. Dan Raju Tradier 38. Susan Estes OpenDoor Trading 39. David Mercer LMAX Exchange 40. Oki Matsumoto Monex Group