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The 2016 Trading Technology 40: Alfred Eskandar

#33 Alfred Eskandar, Chief Executive Officer, Portware

    33
    Alfred Eskandar
    Chief Executive Officer
    Portware
    去年:38

    To stand out in a crowd of trading-software competitors, a company needs technology and innovation as table stakes. Portware had that in early 2012 — the New York–based company was 12 years old, and investment firms were running an aggregate $3 trillion in assets on its execution management systems. But growth had slowed, and Portware’s board, in search of new energy and ideas, hiredAlfred Eskandar, a member of the founding team of buy-side trading platform Liquidnet, as CEO. Today, Portware’s managed-assets total is $10 trillion, payback on product initiatives like Alpha Vision, which introduced real-time predictive analytics to the process of optimizing execution strategy. Portware’s transformation may have only just begun, because it was acquired by financial information company FactSet Research Systems in October for $265 million in cash. With trading systems an entirely new business for FactSet, there was no consolidation: It bought Portware, its management and some 180 employees whole, and Eskandar says the resource constraints on his formerly independent operation have virtually vanished. One reason this is a good strategic fit, the 42-year-old adds, is that both companies put a premium on client service. “Support can always be improved. There is no end state,” Eskandar says, noting that FactSet’s 38 global offices and data centers are now Portware’s network. An “innovation summit” with key clients in London last fall yielded “incredibly valuable input” on R&D priorities, the CEO says. Fixed-income trading is a “shiny red ball” that everyone is chasing. But, he adds, “in this space there is such a race to deliver rather than just to innovate. That’s a huge positive for us.”

    2016 Trading Technology 40

    1.Raymond Tierney III
    Bloomberg
    2.Richard Prager
    BlackRock
    3.Chris Isaacson
    BATS Global Markets
    4.Jonathan Ross
    KCG Holdings
    5.Bradley Peterson
    Nasdaq
    6.Brad Levy
    Markit
    7.Dan Keegan
    Citi
    8.Ronald DePoalo
    Fidelity Institutional
    9.Raj Mahajan
    Goldman Sachs Group
    10.Ari Studnitzer
    CME Group
    11.Mayur Kapani
    Intercontinental Exchange
    12.Gerald O’Connell
    CBOE Holdings
    13.Nicholas Themelis
    MarketAxess Holdings
    14.Gil Mandelzis
    EBS BrokerTec (ICAP)
    15.Bill Chow and Richard Leung
    Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
    16.Rob Park
    IEX Group
    17.Philip Weisberg
    Thomson Reuters
    18.John Mackay (Mack) Gill
    MillenniumIT
    19.Robert Cornish
    International Securities Exchange
    20.Paul Hamill
    Citadel Securities
    21.Eric Noll
    Convergex
    22.Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky
    Broadway Technology
    23.Rishi Nangalia
    REDI Holdings
    24.Veronica Augustsson
    Cinnober Financial Technology
    25.Alasdair Haynes
    Aquis Exchange
    26.Manoj Narang
    Mana Partners
    27.Gaurav Suri
    Arcesium
    28.Robert Sloan
    S3 Partners
    29.Anton Katz and Stephen Mock
    AQR Capital Mgmt
    30.Stu Taylor
    Algomi
    31.D. Keith Ross Jr.
    PDQ Enterprises
    32.Donal Byrne
    Corvil
    33.Alfred Eskandar
    Portware
    34.R. Cromwell Coulson
    OTC Markets Group
    35.Masayuki Hosaka
    Rakuten
    36.Peter Maragos and David Karat
    Dash Financial
    37.Amar Kuchinad
    Electronifie
    38.詹妮弗·纳亚尔
    SR Labs
    39.Dave Snowdon
    Metamako
    40.Dan Raju
    Tradier