The 2016 Tech 50: Michael Cooper

BT Radianz’s CTO moves from No. 33 to No. 36 on this year’s ranking.

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< The 2016 Tech 50

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36
Michael Cooper
Chief Technology Officer
BT Radianz
Last year: 33

In 2005, BT Group paid Reuters Group $175 million to acquire Radianz, which today operates a leading cloud-computing network for the financial services industry. Radianz was providing such utility services back then as well, but it took a few years for “cloud” to catch on as a metaphor and, ultimately, the widely adopted on-demand, pay-as-you-go model that it has become. Although some still debate whether it is safe to store certain corporate “crown jewels” in a shared infrastructure, “by now everyone has at least mentally come over the line,” says Michael Cooper, who became an early Radianz employee in 2001 and since 2010 has been CTO of BT Radianz, which operates within London-based BT’s global banking and financial markets group. The cloud is a clear alternative to “costs of distribution that are never-ending,” Cooper says. Software and other “as-a-service” facilities in the cloud “make more sense.” The 53-year-old points out that Radianz was ahead of its time in another way: as a collaborative community and ecosystem. Connecting thousands of financial market customer endpoints worldwide, the Radianz cloud added 169 customers in the past year and more than 150 new applications from more than 30 providers. “The number of new providers reflects changes in market structure and how they are being operationalized,” Cooper explains. BT’s global reach — and activity in its cloud — yields insight into how financial technologies are evolving. The CTO observes that “in the past 18 months, Singapore has emerged” as a force in fintech innovation, potentially rivaling the U.K. and the U.S. He sees other Asia-Pacific financial capitals — Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo — also developing ecosystems capable of “exploiting local advantages.” While exploring some “early use cases” of blockchain, Cooper says, he has become particularly intrigued by virtual identification-security methods known as tokenization. “Identity is an area of considerable interest,” he says. “This technology can facilitate new ways of doing business.”

Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.


The 2016 Tech 50

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1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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3. Lance Uggla
Markit

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4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq

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9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings

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18. David Rutter
R3CEV

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19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group

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25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.

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26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse

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29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings

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30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.

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31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence

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32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.

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33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services

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34. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management

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39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management

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40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group

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41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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42. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank

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47. Jock Percy
Perseus

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48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions

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49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen

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