< The 2015 Trading Technology 40: Going with the Flow
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Richard Prager
Head of Trading and Liquidity Strategies
BlackRock
Last Year: 6
While much of the buy side bemoans the lack of fixed-income liquidity as a result of dealers’ retreat from principal trading, BlackRock’s Richard Prager offers a different perspective. Corporate bond liquidity is plentiful, in his view. The problem is that “we still have a market structure that is dependent on a principal-based system,” says the $4.3 trillion money management giant’s head of trading and liquidity strategies. “We need to modernize the market structure.” Although Prager, 54, is a strong advocate of electronic trading, that is “only part of the story.” Other elements of the solution he envisions include all-to-all platforms that would attract larger numbers of market participants; new standards and protocols to streamline issuance and trading; and behavioral and attitudinal changes among the players. “It’s all about the CUSIPs [bond issues], the behavior of the participants, the protocols. It’s the whole picture,” says Prager, who joined New York–based BlackRock in 2009 after a career on the sell side, most recently eight years with Bank of America Corp. “We need leadership from the banks, from frequent issuers and from regulators.” Noting that the Securities and Exchange Commission has acknowledged the need to address bond market structure, he adds, “We are on a journey, and it is paying off.” In its own trading efforts, to ensure it can transact regardless of market conditions, BlackRock links to more than 200 liquidity pools, Prager says. The firm is aggregating multiple pricing streams; designing systems that allow traders to view different markets at their desktops and trade with fewer clicks; and upgrading analytics, such as transaction cost analysis.
See also Prager's profiles in the 2013 Trading Technology 40 and the 2012 Trading Technology 30.
The 2015 Trading Technology 40
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2
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4
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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 Richard Korhammer
SR Labs Hazem Dawani
OptionsCity Software