The 2014 Tech 50: Chris Corrado

Until last October venerable benchmark indexing company MSCI had never had a chief information officer. Chris Corrado, capping a 33-year career that included stints at several top Wall Street technology shops, is making amends in a hurry. Reporting to chairman and CEO Henry Fernandez, who called the appointment “the ultimate recognition that MSCI is a technology company,” Corrado says he has been aggressive in forging a management framework for technology and data services — functions that account for 45 percent of MSCI’s 2,600 employees — and paving the way for “significant infrastructure investments.” Having a CIO in place “just scratches the surface of the transformation,” adds the 54-year-old. New York–based MSCI today is far more than the index firm formerly known as Morgan Stanley Capital International. A series of acquisitions since 2004, including Barra, RiskMetrics, IPD Group and InvestorForce, have turned $1 billion-in-revenue MSCI into a broad-based provider of performance and risk management tools. “We are creating an integrated platform for risk and portfolio management,” the CIO explains. Platform services will support innovation by developers and ultimately allow clients to perform their own analytics. “We are in a unique position to be at the center of the investment process,” says Corrado, who held senior technology positions at Morgan Stanley from 1985 to 1997 and was most recently head of platform services at UBS.

1	1	3	4	5
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	凯瑟琳Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8	9	10
Robert Goldstein BlackRock	David Craig Thomson Reuters	Phupinder Gill CME Group	Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group	R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group
11	12	13	14	15
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18	19	20
Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets	Dominique Cerutti Euronext	Ron Levi GFI Group	Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group	Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
21	22	23	24	25
Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ	Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets	Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings	Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings	Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group
26	27	28	29	30
Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.	Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.	Peter Carr Morgan Stanley	Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse	Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.
31	32	33	34	35
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42	43	44	45
Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank	Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates	Tyler Kim MaplesFS	Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.	Jim Minnick eVestment
46	47	48	49	50
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma