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"Retail investors have been underrepresented." "We believe we're going to be very successful and change who gets to participate," says Pottruck. Next stop: using his vast online brokerage operation to wedge his way into the tight-knit world of Wall Street underwriting. But his ambitions hardly stop at online trading.Įven as traditional investment houses chase after his brokerage business, Pottruck, 51, is doing the opposite: employing the power of the Web to transform what was once a middling discount brokerage into a full-service (albeit lowprice) powerhouse. runs the biggest online brokerage business in the world and is building a much-anticipated private electronic trading network with archrival Fidelity Investments. That's ultimately what ties them all together.
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But a half decade into the financial Internet revolution, the field remains dominated by people who think the greatest changes have only just begun. Some of the approaches championed by our online elite may turn out to be pipe dreams others may lead to long-elusive killer apps. 3) first gained notice a few years ago by predicting the demise of traditional brokerage firms now he says he would rather merge with a mainstream financial outfit than with an online competitor. IG), which historically served the institutional and equity worlds, is moving into bonds and retail. 30).Ĭonvergence is happening not just among consumer aggregators.
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5) is building an online gateway that will soon cover the entire financial landscape, aided by pay menu and software allies such as Checkfree Holdings Core. A number of those on our list are explicitly in the convergence business. The Internet, however, has a way of tying people and compavies together. 8), now president of Island ECN, was fetching coffee for Lehman Brothers commodities traders. 11) was a Stanford University professor with a Nobel Prize. 1) was already a leader in financial services, and Financial Engines co-founder William Sharpe (65, No. They are a diverse group in terms of age, experience and where they were when the Internet started to change their world.
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In the pages that follow, Institutional Investor profiles the individuals making the greatest impact on e-finance today. Even executives who foresaw the revolution have had to grapple with the resistance to change of ingrained corporate cultures, as well as with fierce and unrelenting competition. But this transformation has not been instantaneous or easy. Thanks to the sheer power of the Internet and to an inexhaustible bull market, traditional finance is being remade, as Web applications sweep into every corner of the business, from retail brokerage to mortgage banking to the underwriting of corporate securities. Financial instruments and products, after all, are nothing more than words and numbers, bookkeeping entries, exchangeable in a virtual marketplace without the worry of storing and shipping physical goods. No business - not bookselling, not airline ticketing, not even pornography - seems so perfectly suited to the online world as finance. Originally published as the Online Finance 40, the ranking profiled the movers, shaker, innovators and agitators making the greatest impact on "e-finance" in the year 2000.Īs the Internet transforms the world, an elite corps-veterans and upstarts alike- is transforming finance. From the archives of Institutional Investor, we bring you the first ever Tech 50 ranking.
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