< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

Incubators, accelerators, R&D labs, strategic venture funds — these are routes new technologies travel on their way to market acceptance. To gain insights and prepare themselves for the latest new things, a growing number of financial institutions have taken up one or another of these activities. Citigroup does them all. They are part of the mission of Citi Ventures, a Palo Alto, California–based unit headed by Deborah Hopkins, who is also chief innovation officer of the New York–based parent. “We are a small team of about two dozen,” she says, “supporting a very big company” that has $1.9 trillion in assets, operates in more than 160 countries and employs some 240,000. Citi Ventures is a self-styled “innovation engine,” out to prove that a big industry incumbent can overcome bureaucracy and inertia to thrive in a world changing at what Hopkins calls “exponential speed.” Citi Ventures’ marquee is a venture capital portfolio that made its first investment in 2011, profited from two exits (fraud detection start-up Silver Tail Systems, acquired by EMC Corp. in 2012, and mobile commerce company Shopkick, bought by South Korea’s SK Planet in 2014) and currently holds New Age investment adviser Betterment and payment processor Square, among others. The objective is “bigger than ROI,” says Hopkins, 60, formerly CFO of Boeing Co. and Lucent Technologies and chief operations and technology officer of Citi, who set up shop in Silicon Valley in 2010. Over the past two years, her group has linked Citi’s technology labs around the world into a better-coordinated network, launched a fintech accelerator in Israel and another, multiregional one in partnership with Sunnyvale, California–based Plug and Play Tech Center. “We have to be unencumbered by apparent constraints and think like a start-up, in the boldest way possible, about solving customer problems,” she adds.

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Solana vs. Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: How Do They Compare? Sponsored by CME Group April 29, 2025 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group 4. Lance Uggla Markit 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group

11. David Craig Thomson Reuters 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 13. Michael Spencer ICAP 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co.

21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp.

26. John Marcante Vanguard Group 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse 30. Chris Corrado MSCI

31. David Gledhill DBS Bank 32. John Bates Software AG 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group

36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 38. Jim Minnick eVestment 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS

41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. 42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite

46. Mazy Dar OpenFin 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group 50. Jock Percy Perseus