< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud
30
Robert Alexander
Chief Information Officer
Capital One
Financial Corp.
Last year: 37
Capital One Financial Corp. is a $290 billion-in-assets bank holding company, but for chief information officer Robert Alexander, it’s all about technology. “What we’re focused on is how do we become a great software development organization,” says the U.S. Air Force veteran and former Bain & Co. consultant, who joined the McLean, Virginia–based bank in 1998 and has been CIO since 2007. “If you’re going to be a great software company, you have to have the network and hardware to support it.” The 49-year-old has gone so far as to brand his department Capital One Technology. The unit aims to bring top software engineering talent together in work spaces away from headquarters to encourage collaboration and creativity in an “agile development” environment. The bank is certainly up to speed on cloud computing and big data, using a private cloud along with public utilities like Amazon Web Services and Hadoop, an open-source platform for extremely large-scale processing and analytics. The technology group has been working on security and antifraud measures, mobile apps and online innovations including a feature that translates credit card billing disclosures into plain English. “If you’re not building it better, faster, more innovatively and creatively,” Alexander says, “then you’re going to get left behind.”
The 2014 Tech 50
1
1
3
4
5
Thomas Secunda
Bloomberg Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange Catherine Bessant
Bank of America Corp. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments Lance Uggla
Markit 6
7
8
9
10
Robert Goldstein
BlackRock David Craig
Thomson Reuters Phupinder Gill
CME Group Anna Ewing
NASDAQ
OMX Group R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group 11
12
13
14
15
Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures Dan Mathisson
Credit Suisse Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings Michael Spencer
ICAP Michael Bodson
Depository Trust &
Clearing Corp. 16
17
18
19
20
Joe Ratterman
BATS Global Markets Dominique Cerutti
Euronext Ron Levi
GFI Group Gaurav Suri
D.E. Shaw Group Charles Li
Hong Kong
Exchanges and
Clearing 21
22
23
24
25
Lou Eccleston
S&P Capital IQ Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings Antoine
Shagoury
London Stock
Exchange Group 26
27
28
29
30
Christopher
Perretta
State Street Corp. Kevin Rhein
Wells Fargo & Co. Peter Carr
Morgan Stanley Hauke Stars
Deutsche Börse Robert Alexander
Capital One
Financial Corp. 31
32
33
34
35
David Gershon
SuperDerivatives Chris Corrado
MSCI Joseph Squeri
Citadel Tanuja Randery
BT Global Services John Bates
Software AG 36
37
38
39
40
Gary Scholten
Principal Financial Group David Gledhill
DBS Bank Simon Garland
Kx Systems Cristóbal Conde
FinTech Innovation Lab Jeff Parker
EidoSearch 41
42
43
44
45
Kim Fournais &
Lars Seier Christensen
Saxo Bank Kenneth Marlin
Marlin & Associates Tyler Kim
MaplesFS Jim McGuire
Charles Schwab Corp. Jim Minnick
eVestment 46
47
48
49
50
Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix Sebastián Ceria
Axioma Yasuki Okai
Nomura Research Institute Niki Beattie
Market Structure Partners Mas Nakachi
OpenGamma