< The 2016 Tech 50

Since 2010, when Charles Li moved into the top job at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, he and his board have laid out a succession of three-year plans. The first set a goal of getting into commodities, which was met with the 2012 acquisition of London Metal Exchange (LME) for $2.2 billion. The second was a blueprint for a market linkage to mainland China, Shanghai–Hong Kong Stock Connect, which launched in 2014 and is expected to be replicated this year for Shenzhen. The third plan, released in January, is “our most ambitious yet,” says the 54-year-old CEO. It covers opportunities in fixed income, currencies and commodities, including a “bond connect” to the mainland and, more broadly, establishing Hong Kong as a truly global money and capital market center. “Our new motto is ‘connecting China with the world, reshaping the global market landscape,’” says Li, who has a law degree from Columbia University and served in top China posts for Merrill Lynch & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. before joining HKEx’s management in 2009. On the equity front he will be starting a campaign to attract secondary listings of global companies to the Hong Kong exchange. In commodities he aims to leverage the “connect” model with LME “to create an effective spot trading platform, thereby ‘physicalizing’ the mainland’s commodities market,” he says. “In time, the platform could generate a series of globally influential China price benchmarks and provide a solid foundation for the sustained development of commodity futures trading either onshore or in Hong Kong.” The planned bond connect, Li adds, could “attract investors and liquidity to support the future development of more interest rate and exchange rate derivatives.” HKEx will be building further on investments it made over the past three years to transform its core technology, the CEO says: “We have moved from reliance on proprietary technology to an open systems platform,” which, he notes, has become a “de facto standard” across the financial industry. “We are actively evaluating the adoption of cloud computing for our technology stack, especially for new projects such as the spot commodity-trading platform we plan to launch on the mainland.”

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The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. 2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange Model Portfolios to Deliver Alternative Asset Exposure Sponsored by BlackRock April 29, 2025 3. Lance Uggla Markit 4. Phupinder Gill CME Group 5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg 6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group

7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock 8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq 9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures 10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings 11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments 12. David Craig Thomson Reuters

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. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings 18. David Rutter R3CEV

19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. 20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets 21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings 22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings 23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. 24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group

25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp. 26. David Gledhill DBS Bank 27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group 28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse 29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings 30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co.

31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence 32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp. 33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services 34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix 35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma 36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz

37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS 38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management 39. David Harding Winton Capital Management 40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group 41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives 42. Jim Minnick eVestment

43. Stephane Dubois Xignite 44. Mazy Dar OpenFin 45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America 46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank 47. Jock Percy Perseus 48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions

49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software 50. Pieter van der Does Adyen