Chief Executive Officer
Tradeweb
[21]
While helping to launch Tradeweb in the 1990s, Lee Olesky took some cues from another e-business trailblazer: EBay. “It’s a similar concept, working on the Internet advantage of searching out the best price,” explains Olesky, who was then at Credit Suisse First Boston and working with his colleague and Tradeweb founder James Toffey on what started out as an institutional trading venue for Treasury securities. “EBay is running auctions for Pez dispensers, and Tradeweb for government bonds, interest rate swaps, credit derivatives, et cetera,” says the 48-year-old, who succeeded Toffey as CEO in 2008 after six years as the company’s London-based president. “I applied those ideas in places I know.” Those places, in terms of number of products, now exceed two dozen, including this year’s addition: European repurchase agreements. The 500-employee firm, owned by a consortium led by Thomson Reuters and steadily reporting double-digit annual revenue growth, recently moved its headquarters from Jersey City, New Jersey, to New York. Now that Tradeweb is an established international presence in its 14th year of operation, Olesky has established his own presence in Washington, lobbying to influence regulatory reform in derivatives markets. New regulations “will result in significant change and opportunity,” he says. “Tradeweb is advocating for greater understanding of the markets.”
