The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Ari Studnitzer

< The 2016 Trading Technology 40

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Ari Studnitzer
Head of Technology, Architecture and Product Management
CME Group
PNR

In 1992 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange introduced Globex, a pioneering electronic futures platform that over time would marginalize open-outcry trading. Four years later Allen Studnitzer saw e-trading and other changes coming and sold his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade, which merged with CME in 2007 to form CME Group, where Studnitzer’s son Ari is today a top technology executive. Ari Studnitzer appreciates the irony that he is “helping drive the vision that my father couldn’t fully articulate back in the 1990s.” CME still sees “a place for both the floor and electronic markets,” says Studnitzer, 38. “But the electronic markets have enabled globalization.” As head of technology, architecture and product management, Studnitzer reports to CME chief information officer Kevin Kometer (No. 1 last year) and works across multiple divisions — clearing, operations, products and services, and technology — on implementing client-focused technology and enhancing the customer experience. A case in point is the Customer Center, a portal completed last year that allows access to CME Group applications and services via a single log-on. Studnitzer, who earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, first worked for CME in 2000 as a Deloitte consultant and joined full-time in 2002, just before the now-$3.3 billion-in-revenue company went public. Formerly head of the market data and order routing teams, Studnitzer was head of enterprise architecture before taking on broader IT and product responsibilities in 2014. A member of the investment committee of CME Ventures, which takes strategic stakes in start-ups, he says the first decade of this century was all about “electronification.” Now, he explains, platforms are converging in a wave of “digitization. Cloud technology and [browser standard] HTML5 are allowing people in Asia or Europe to pull out an iPad or computer and see the same information. We can increase capacity and provide new services that we never thought possible.” •

2016 Trading Technology 40