The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Nicholas Themelis

MarketAxess Holdings has an answer for the bond market’s liquidity woes: Open Trading, a protocol introduced in 2012, “provides all participants a way to interact with each other for the first time,” saysNicholas Themelis, chief information officer of the New York–based company. “We’re changing the world.” The anonymous, all-to-all trading functionality may be compelling — “those connectivity points [among dealers and money managers] just didn’t exist in the past,” the 51-year-old explains — but the take-up is gradual. MarketAxess, which according to research firm Greenwich Associates handles 86 percent of electronic trading in corporate bonds, is executing just 6 percent of its transactions through Open Trading. “Why couldn’t it be 15 percent or 40 percent?” asks the upbeat Themelis. His answer: While “lots of companies are talking” about structural fixes, “we’re proving this works. We’re able to leverage the community we’ve built and connect liquidity pockets wherever they may be.” Formed in 2000 and a public company since 2004, MarketAxess reported a record $767 billion in total trading volume last year; its $475 billion U.S. high-grade volume accounted for 14.5 percent of that part of the market. Themelis, who joined MarketAxess in 2004 and previously held regional CIO positions at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers Holdings, is currently focusing on the first-quarter launch of Open Trading in Europe and on growing demand for data services. “Participants want more data and context around the market before they are comfortable putting in a price,” he notes.

See alsoThemelis's profile in the 2013 Trading Technology 40.

1	2	3	4	5
Kevin Kometer CME Group	Richard Prager BlackRock	Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg Tradebook	Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings	Charles Vice Intercontinental Exchange
6	7	8	9	10
Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets	Bradley Peterson Nasdaq OMX Group	Brad Levy MarkitSERV	Dan Keegan Citi	Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional
11	12	13	14	15
Gerard Beatty Goldman Sachs Group	Gerald O'Connell CBOE Holdings	Brenda Hoffman TMX Group	Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets	Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings
16	17	18	19	20
Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch	Gil Mandelzis EBS-BrokerTec (ICAP)	Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority	Jerry Dobner GFI Group	Michael Liberman BlueMountain Capital Management
21	22	23	24	25
Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing	Jamie Selway Investment Technology Group	Brad Katsuyama IEX Group	John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT	Jamil Nazarali Citadel Execution Services
26	27	28	29	30
Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange	Tyler Moeller andJoshua Walksy Broadway Technology	Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings	Manoj Narang Tradeworx, Thesys Technologies	Oki Matsumoto Monex Group
31	32	33	34	35
Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange	Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology	Stu Taylor Algomi	Luís Otávio Saliba Furtado BM&FBovespa	Tal Cohen Chi-X Global Holdings
36	37	38	39	40
Donal Byrne Corvil	R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group	Alfred Eskandar Portware	理查德Korhammer SR Labs	Hazem Dawani OptionsCity Software