The 2016 Tech 50: Robert Goldstein

< The 2016 Tech 50

7
Robert Goldstein
Chief Operating Officer
BlackRock
Last year: 5

Since becoming chief operating officer of $4.6 trillion-in-assets money manager BlackRock in July 2014, Robert Goldstein has held on to his previous responsibilities as global head of BlackRock Solutions, the technology arm that includes the Aladdin portfolio and risk management systems business and posted $646 million in revenue last year. Goldstein is currently focused on taking BlackRock’s historically institutional technology into the retail realm. The route to mainstream investors goes through FutureAdvisor, a San Francisco–based digital, or “robo,” wealth manager that BlackRock acquired last September, and distribution partnerships with the likes of LPL Financial and RBC Wealth Management. “We’ve taken what we believe is the leading platform for digital advice and we’re institutionalizing it,” says Goldstein, 42, who joined BlackRock as an analyst in 1994, moved to BlackRock Solutions at its start in 1999 and has headed the unit since 2009. “The regulatory environment is helping support an increasing need for risk transparency across all these end-customer portfolios,” Goldstein adds. “We’re delivering best-in-class portfolio construction, risk analytics and content.” He stresses that the New York–based firm is continuing to invest in Aladdin as its core system “while also leveraging new technology to open Aladdin and make its data more accessible in this world of everybody being a data scientist.” Aladdin’s revenue jumped to $528 million in 2015 from $474 million the year before, Goldstein says, with more than half of the total coming from global clients, up from 20 percent in 2010. BlackRock has introduced a version of Aladdin for custodians, fund accountants and other service providers; JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s securities services business is a new client. Goldstein muses that computing advances could significantly change traditional exception-based work flows, which are designed to identify problems needing human intervention. “We never figured out as an industry why the computer can’t do it,” he says. “If technology can identify the problem, why can’t it fix the problem?”

The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 3. Lance Uggla Markit 4. Phupinder Gill CME Group 5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group

7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq 9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 12. David Craig Thomson Reuters

13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 18. David Rutter R3CEV

19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. 20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group

25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 26. David Gledhill DBS Bank 27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse 29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings 30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co.

31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence 32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp. 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O’Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz

37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 39. David Harding Winton Capital Management 40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 42. Jim Minnick eVestment

43. Stephane Dubois Xignite 44. Mazy Dar OpenFin 45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank 47. Jock Percy Perseus 48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions

49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 50. Pieter van der Does Adyen