Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based CEO’ operating in the Trading Platform space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Peter Smith
CEO and Co-Founder of Blockchain.com
Peter Smith is a Co-Founder and CEO at Blockchain. He is also the Director, Board Member at UK Finance.
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About Blockchain.com, Blockchain.com Ventures: Blockchain.com is a platform that offers ways to buy, hold, and use cryptocurrency.
Mark Lamb
Co-Founder and CEO of CoinFLEX
Mark is CEO of CoinFLEX and a longtime advocate for physically delivered futures over cash settlement as a way to prevent manipulation. Mark’s vision for crypto derivatives is to grow the industry beyond speculation into real commercial use for lending, borrowing, hedging and payments. Mark Lamb has been in bitcoin since 2012 and previously co-founded Coinfloor, the UK’s first cryptocurrency exchange back in 2013.
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About CoinFLEX: CoinFLEX is the leading crypto derivatives exchange and yield platform.
Julien Hammerson
CEO of Calastone
Julien became Chief Executive Officer of Calastone in October 2012. Prior to this he held the role of Executive Chairman, having joined in September 2011. Since Julien joined Calastone, the business has grown from being a solely UK domestic business to establishing connectivity across 40 countries and territories, with offices in the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia. Before joining Calastone, Julien led Corham Capital, a global investment advisory firm that he founded in 2007. Prior to this Julien held several leadership positions at institutional brokerage Instinet Group, where he ran the European segment of the global equities business before assuming responsibility for global equities in the UK, Europe and all international business in the US and Asia. Julien began his career at Lombard Odier as a US Equities trader.
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About Calastone: Calastone is a global transaction network for the mutual fund industry.
Ken Tregidgo
Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Calastone
Ken joined Calastone in 2008. As Deputy CEO, Ken leads Calastone’s business and technology strategy. He has over 25 years’ experience in business and technology transformation within the financial services industry. Ken joined from Atos Euronext Market Solutions (now NYSE Technologies), where he was Global Head of Strategy and Business Development. Prior to AEMS, Ken was Chief Operating Officer of Instinet International & Instinet Europe, joining from a five-year tenure at Merrill Lynch as Head of Architecture for the Corporate and Institutional Client Group. Prior to this, Ken was head of Fixed Income Technology at S.G.Warburg and Global Head of Derivative Technology at Chase Manhattan Bank. Ken has a B.Sc. in Physics from Imperial College and holds a D.Phil in Atomic Spectroscopy from Oxford University.
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About Calastone: Calastone is a global transaction network for the mutual fund industry.
Manu Choudhary
CEO of DMALINK
Tech Focused Entrepreneur, Venture Investor and Avid Visual Artist
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About DMALINK: DMALINK is a data-centric trading and RegTech platform for professional Foreign Exchange traders globally.
Karan Shanmugarajah
CEO of WealthKernel
Karan is the CEO of WealthKernel, a regulated cloud-based provider of modular APIs and solutions to enable businesses to offer savings and investments services. Prior to co-founding WealthKernel, Karan was a portfolio manager at Barclay. He is a CFA® charter holder and holds an MSc in Accounting and Finance from CASS Business School in London.
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About WealthKernel: WealthKernel is a supplier of infrastructure for companies looking to offer digital investment services.
Dmitry Gunyashov
Co-Founder & CEO of Cryptopay
Dmitry is a long-term bitcoin supporter and has been involved with the bitcoin community for more than 3 years. Moreover, he has an extensive experience in e-commerce and payment systems.
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About Cryptopay, LTC.Miner: Cryptopay is a digital currency firms, offering crypto-wallets, debit cards, B2B payments, & investments.
Florian Thaler
Oil Strategist, CEO and Co-Founder at OilX of OilX
Florian is Oil Strategist, CEO and Co-Founder at OilX, a startup that is innovating oil trading analytics through deep empirical knowledge and state-of-the-art data science. Florian has >15 years’ oil experience at Shell, Citibank and Och-Ziff. He completed a doctorate at Vienna University of Economics and Business and a business administration degree at Bocconi University. Florian is one of 100 Future Energy Leaders of the World Energy Council.
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About OilX: OilX is a oil sector that provides a global real-time oil supply-demand balance.
Julian Bourne
CEO & Co-Founder of Sellar
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About Sellar, Waffle: Sellar is the new trade ordering experience for breweries selling beer directly to trade customers.
Mack Gill
CEO of MillenniumIT
Mack Gill has been in the financial technology industry since 1994, working for one of the largest global vendors of financial-markets software, SunGard. He started in the derivatives software business and later became President of SunGard Technology Services, where he launched and developed SunGard’s software development and client services operations in Asia, scaling the business to 3,000 employees. Later, he headed the company’s global consulting business, managing over 1,000 consultants worldwide, before being selected to manage SunGard’s overall technology strategy. Mack was chosen as a member of the Young Global Leaders, an affiliate of the World Economic Forum, and is a Board Member of the International Association for Quantitative Finance(IAQF). He holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s from Yale University. Mack Gill succeeded MillenniumIT founder Tony Weeresinghe as CEO in May 2013.
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About MillenniumIT: MillenniumIT is a leading innovative trading technology business.
Ran Aroussi
Founder & CEO of Tradologics
Ran Aroussi is entrepreneur, software developer, and the founder of Tradologics – a cloud platform for trading.
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About Tradologics: Cloud platform for programmatic trading
Gabriele Muse
Co-founder & CEO of Coinrule
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About Coinrule: Coinrule Catches the Next Market Opportunity on Your Behalf by Automating Your Investments
Jeff Hancock
Chief Executive Officer of coinpass.com
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About coinpass.com: UK Based Cryptocurrency Trading & Investment Platform
Tom Higgins
CEO of Gold-i Ltd
Tom Higgins is founder and CEO of Gold-i. His experience in financial technology spans over 25 years, having spent most of his career working in the City, London. His career history includes: Management Consultant at PA Consulting Group, Chief Technology Officer at The IPE, Head of IT Business Strategy at NYSE Euronext, COO Europe & Asia at Reuters and Chief Technology Officer at online broker, ODL Securities. He holds an MBA from Cass Business School in London. With an in-depth knowledge of the trading technology industry, Tom Higgins spotted a gap in the market to enhance the FX trading process for retail brokers, providing them with the same tools as institutional brokers at a fraction of the cost. He left ODL in 2008 to set up Gold-i. Under Tom’s leadership, Gold-i has grown from start-up business to global market leader in trading systems integration, renowned throughout the industry for its innovation, award-winning products and high service levels. With his open management style and strong leadership, Tom has created a culture with clear values, where employees are motivated to deliver the best products and services in the industry. Tom has won numerous awards in recognition of his leadership skills and in 2014, led the company to win the UK’s ultimate business accolade, The Queen’s Award for Enterprise. He was invited to an event at Buckingham Palace, attended by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate the business’ achievements. As the inspiration and driving force behind Gold-i, Tom has played a major role in disrupting the retail FX market, giving opportunities to brokers across the globe which did not previously exist. Moving forward, Tom plans to use his market insight to continue to drive innovation, introducing additional products to further disrupt the market. Tom has four children – aged 18, 16, 14 and 6, 1 dog, 2 cats, 4 chickens, and one wife! In the small amount of spare time he has, he enjoys restoring his classic car – a 1964 Triumph Herald.
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About Gold-i Ltd: Gold-i is the global market leader in trading systems integration
Saurabh Goyal
Founder and CEO of Satoshi Systems Limited
Saurabh, our Chief Product Strategist, has 15 years of experience in conceptualizing, designing and developing trading systems. One of the earliest bitcoin & blockchain backer, Saurabh is passionate about emerging technologies such as Blockchain, IoT and AI for the fintech industry. He spends most of his free time with his boys (aged 5 and 8) teaching them chess and programming.
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About Satoshi Systems Limited: Satoshi Systems provides state of the art software solutions for the trading space, currently focusing on the commodity.
Richard Parsons
CEO, Instinet Europe Limited of Instinet
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About Instinet: Instinet, along with its subsidiaries, provides online security brokerage and electronic trading services.
Rob Denham
CEO & Partner of C3 Post Trade
Rob Denham has led C3 since its inception. He brings more than 25 years experience in the financial services industry, working for organisations including: Salomon Brothers, Bankers Trust, Credit Suisse, ING, Abbey Financial Markets and Deutsche Bank. As a seasoned practitioner with significant experience in the post trade space Rob is a strategic thought-leader operating across trading and operations in both line management and strategic change capacities. He has a deep understand of strategy, business architecture and process improvement; has successfully transformed operation areas he has led through a focus on service, control, efficiency, change and people.
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About C3 Post Trade: C3 post trade platform is a web-based solution that easily wraps around both legacy and new systems to deliver efficiency and transparency.
Abdullah Hiyatt
Founder and CEO of THETA Trading Systems
20 years of experience in capital markets working with sell and buy-side firms on e-strategy, design and building e-trading solutions. In 2013, Abdullah’s focus shifted to the buy-side and more recently worked with Deutsche Wealth Management leading the design and delivery of SPARTA, its new global multi-asset trading platform.
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About Deutsche Bank, THETA Trading Systems: Capital Markets London based FinTech
Fabio Kuhn
Co-Founder & CEO of Vortexa
Co-Founder & CEO of Vortexa.
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About Vortexa: Shaping the future of energy markets
Andrew Toumazi
CEO and Founder of BLOC-X
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About BLOC-X: BLOC-X is a provider of electronic trading software for OTC Oil Block Future markets that reduces your transaction costs by up to 90%.
Jon Notley
Co Founder & CEO of Zero Deposit
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About Zero Deposit: A trading name of Global Property Ventures Limited.
Ralf Henke
Co-Founder & CEO of AxeTrading
Co-founder of AxeTrading, Ralf has over 15 years’ experience in Fixed Income electronic trading and is responsible for technology and software development at AxeTrading. Holding a degree in Computer Engineering, his past experience includes designing and implementing bespoke Fixed Income pricing and trading systems for JP Morgan and other leading Fixed Income dealers. Ralf is a strategic business developer with familiarity of trading markets in different countries. Prior to co-founding AxeTrading, he contributed to the start-up and development of several other successful Fixed Income trading technology companies, each of which remains successfully in business today
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About AxeTrading, Quinsol AG: AxeTrading specializes in providing effective technology solutions for the challenges facing fixed income sell-side.
Justin Short
CEO and Founder of Nous
Before founding NOUS® Justin worked at a number of investment banks over a period of 14 years, building fully automated trading strategies including Market Making Engines; Smart Order Routers; Agency Benchmark Algorithms and Options Pricing Engines. He also ran regional teams to determine the product strategy and directly influenced the global product, organised the necessary quantitative research, designed and tested fully automated low-latency trading strategies, and coded or provided input to the development team.
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About Nous: Nous designs and develops virtual trading platform for financial market.
Marc Nohr
Group CEO, Agencies of Miroma Group
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About Miroma Group: Miroma Group is an end-to-end marketing and communications collective offering ideation, creation and distribution services.
Matt Dolton
CEO of Kynetix
Co-founder and Director at Kynetix, adviser and business leader with a solid understanding of commodities markets, technology and business change, improving business value and the opportunities afforded by the agile application of technology. Specialist commodities knowledge includes the processes around warrants and receipts, derivatives physical deliveries including metals and softs, depository processing, clearing and settlement, warehousing and rent, trade finance & collateral. Accountable for enterprise projects including large scale physical deliveries platforms for London Metal Exchange, NYSE Liffe and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) as well as Exchange Traded and OTC derivatives processing including reconciliations and exception workflow management.
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About Kynetix: Digital transformation for post-trade in capital markets
Dave Murphy
CEO of Equiduct
David Murphy is the CEO of Equiduct.
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About Equiduct: Equiduct is a trading platform offering premium Best Execution services and a lit central limit order book.
Clive Nathan
CEO, Underwriting of Global Risk Partners
Clive Nathan is the CEO, Underwriting at Global Risk Partners.
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About Global Risk Partners: Global Risk Partners is an investment vehicle aimed at insurance brokers and managing general agents trading in the UK retail and global.
Mike Bruce
CEO Broking of Global Risk Partners
Mike Bruce is the CEO Broking at Global Risk Partners Limited.
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About Global Risk Partners: Global Risk Partners is an investment vehicle aimed at insurance brokers and managing general agents trading in the UK retail and global.
