The 2014 Tech 50: Mas Nakachi

July 08, 2014

< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

Mas Nakachi

Chief Executive Officer

OpenGamma

(PNR)

Risk management and transparency are pervasive concerns in the financial and investing worlds, but cost-effective solutions have proved elusive. That’s what motivated OpenGamma to set up shop in 2009. The founding team, led by Kirk Wylie (No. 50 last year), now executive chairman, brought open-source-software development into trading and risk analytics. The company attracted $23 million in venture capital from, among others, ICAP (see Michael Spencer, No. 14) and its Euclid Opportunities fund and in March 2013 handed the CEO reins to derivatives technology veteran Mas Nakachi. “We’re focusing on taking out costs, specifically from investment banks and users of derivatives products, by focusing on analytics that are standardized,” says Nakachi, who joined London-based OpenGamma in 2012 after serving as director of business development for Calypso Technology’s rates, fixed income and credit business. “Because it’s standardized, you work with the industry; you don’t try to outsmart it,” the 40-year-old explains. “When you work in that collaborative fashion, you get buy-in, and it’s good for the whole industry because it’s transparent.” OpenGamma has positioned its open-architecture, real-time risk and margining capabilities to support new modes of derivatives clearing. In March, ICAP’s ReMATCH risk mitigation service said it would use OpenGamma for on-demand analytics on single-name credit default swaps.

The 2014 Tech 50