< The 2017 Tech 40

28. Lou Eccleston
Chief Executive Officer
TMX Group
Last year: 27

When Lou Eccleston took over as chief executive officer of Toronto's TMX Group in 2014, he promptly began throwing words like "entrepreneurial" and "technology driven" around what had been a staid exchange-operating holding company. Eccleston set TMX — the owner of trading venues including the Toronto Stock Exchange, Montreal Exchange, and TSX Venture Exchange — on course to being a global technology-enabled services business, while seeking to reverse multiple down years on the bottom line. He had already established a reputation for being unabashed in his embrace of digital disruption in his previous role as president of McGraw Hill Financial's S&P Capital IQ, where his culture-changing efforts included the creation of an innovation hub with Google-like workspaces and amenities. At TMX, Eccleston accomplished a turnaround to what he calls "profitable growth, achieving both record revenue and earnings while continuing to pay down significant amounts of debt" in 2016. In the first quarter of this year, revenue rose 5 percent from a year earlier to $186 million, and income from operations jumped 17 percent to $81 million. "This is the strongest digital effort I have ever been involved in," says Eccleston. At age 60, he says it's full speed ahead.

 
The 2017 Tech 40

1. Adena Friedman NASDAQ 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 3. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 4. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 2, 2025 5. Lance Uggla IHS Markit

6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 7. David Craig Thomson Reuters 8. Michael Spencer NEX Group 9. Don Callahan Citigroup 10. Elisha Wiesel Goldman Sachs Group

11. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. 12. Terrence Duffy CME Group 13. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 14. Sean Belka Fidelity Investments 15. Chris Concannon CBOE Holdings

16. Guy Chiarello First Data Corp. 17. Steven Lieblich Citadel 18. David Rutter R3CEV 19. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 20. Alfred Spector Two Sigma Investments

21. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw Group 22. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 23. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 24. David Gledhill DBS Bank 25. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings

26. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 27. Peter Brown & Robert Mercer Renaissance Technologies 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 29. Peter Cherecwich Northern Trust Corp. 30. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence

31. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 32. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma

36. Brian Conlon First Derivatives and Kx Systems 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Michael Cooper BT Radianz 39. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions 40. Jim Minnick eVestment