The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Billy Hult

In mid-2013, Tradeweb Markets was one of the first to apply to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for permission to open swaps execution facilities under provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. With more than 20 SEFs in the mix — including two operated by Tradeweb — a shakeout is considered inevitable. But Tradeweb has proved its mettle, claiming a 40 percent share of buy-side SEF activity for interest rate swaps at year-end 2014, up from 10 percent a year earlier. “The tremendous work we’ve put into our SEFs has paid dividends, and we have distinguished ourselves as one of the leading players,” declaresBilly Hult, president of New York–based Tradeweb. Related to those efforts, Tradeweb has executed more than $700 billion in compression trades, in which investors and fund managers net out their positions to reduce risk. Since pioneering e-trading of U.S. Treasuries in the late 1990s, Tradeweb, now majority-owned by Thomson Reuters, has grown into a leading global fixed-income and derivatives platform. Hult, 45, who joined the company in 2000 from Société Générale and has been president since 2008, is spearheading an effort to crack the U.S. corporate credit market, a stronghold of MarketAxess Holdings (see Nicholas Themelis, No. 15). Last year Tradeweb introduced the first phase of its offering for round- and odd-lot corporate bond transactions in the U.S. High-yield and emerging-markets products are coming next. “We are doing everything to be a real competitor in this space,” Hult says. “We are extremely conscious of the patience needed to wind up succeeding in the right way.”

See alsoHult'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