< The 2017 Tech 40

27. Peter Brown &
Robert Mercer
Co–Chief Executive Officers
Renaissance Technologies
Last year: PNR

Last fall a Bloomberg story calling hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies "the blackest box in all of finance" quoted MIT Sloan School of Management finance professor Andrew Lo as saying the firm is "the commercial version of the Manhattan Project." Lo also said the 300-employee, $48 billion firm is "the pinnacle of quant investing." Both descriptions are apt.

Founded in 1982 by mathematician and former intelligence-community codebreaker James Simons, Renaissance rose to fame despite its unstinting secrecy thanks to the outsize returns of its Medallion Fund, long closed to outside investors. The fund generated annualized returns of nearly 80 percent, before fees, from its inception in 1988 through late 2016, according to Bloomberg. Simons retired in 2009 but remains non-executive chair; today the firm is run by co-CEOs Peter Brown and Robert Mercer, whom Simons recruited in the 1990s out of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Both Brown, 62, and Mercer, 71, maintain low profiles, though Mercer's has risen in recent years, particularly after he emerged as an active supporter of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

In a rare public appearance in 2014, Mercer, accepting an award, described himself as "simply a computer programmer." He added that in nearly 50 years of coding, he has "taken great pleasure in writing programs that do remarkable things."

 
The 2017 Tech 40

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