20 Brenda Hoffman Group Head of Information Technology TMX Group Last year: 27 Leads tend to be fleeting in the low-latency arms race, but Brenda Hoffman is taking time to savor a victory lap. Last year TMX Group, the Canadian exchange company where she is head of IT, delivered its record-slashing new trading engine, TMX Quantum XA, reducing trade times from 2,000 microseconds to 25 — well below the prevailing industry standard of about 300. “We believe we are the fastest on the planet,” boasts Hoffman, 49, who joined TMX’s flagship, the Toronto Stock Exchange, in 2001 after stints at global exchanges for Canadian consulting firm TIL Systems and IBM Global Services. To get up to Quantum XA’s speed, executing brokerages, such as Getco (now part of KCG Holdings) and Tradebot Systems, “had to recertify to our new API [application programming interface],” notes Hoffman, adding that her technology team “is really pumped.” Quantum XA went live on the TMX Select alternative trading system last August, and it will roll out on the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange and Alpha Trading Systems later this year. In October, TMX Atrium, the infrastructure provider known as Atrium Network before TMX acquired it in 2011, announced a link to the Moscow Exchange. “Regardless of where you are in the world, if you want TMX or Nasdaq, you can just plug into a local network and bounce around the globe, getting data from other exchanges,” explains Hoffman.
See also Hoffman's profile in the 2013 Trading Technology 40.
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