The 2013 Tech 50: David Gershon

A theoretical physicist who went into finance in the 1990s, David Gershon rose to global head of foreign exchange exotic options at Barclays Capital in London and then had a big entrepreneurial idea: to bring price transparency to forex options. SuperDerivatives did exactly that, parlaying the Internet technology available when Gershon founded the company in London in 2000. As the Internet gained speed and “industrial strength,” Gershon introduced innovation upon innovation, extending his benchmarking models into other asset classes and enhancing the services with trading capabilities, automated simulations, speech recognition and other add-ons. Last December, playing to an audience of financial institutions that continually gripe about market data expenses, SuperDerivatives launched DGX for real-time information, news and analysis, covering cash and derivative products across asset classes. The cloud-based platform is said to significantly undercut the cost of that market data industry benchmark, Bloomberg. “No expensive terminals, no complicated codes,” chairman and CEO Gershon, 48, says pointedly. “It’s going to be disruptive to this crazy pricing scheme. We can really shake up the market.” DGX has attracted 41,000 users. In June, Nasdaq OMX Group tapped SuperDerivatives to deliver settlement prices for its new NLX interest rate futures market. “It’s been a transformational year,” says Gershon.