Sell-Side Technology Awards 2016: King Holds Court

It seemed appropriate to ask Peter King—who, since 1992, has been on the Board of Selectors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame—to do the honors at this year’s Sell-Side Technology Awards, given that half the writers currently on the Waters staff have sports writing backgrounds, while two of our recently departed number—Jake Thomases and Tim Bourgaize Murray—were similarly sports crazy. Past guests of honor at the SST Awards include Tommy John (baseball), Carl Banks (football), John Starks (basketball), Stéphane Matteau (hockey), and Gerry Cooney (boxing). 

As we have come to expect over the years, there were a number of new faces in this year’s winners’ circle: Clearpool, MSCI, CLS, Cloud9 Technologies, Broadridge Financial Solutions, Fenergo, OpenFin, AcadiaSoft, Broadway Technologies, OTAS Technologies and R3 all won individual categories. 

In another break with tradition, this year’s technology provider of the year category was shared for the first time by two firms—SmartStream and Numerix—while R3 walked away with the product of the year award, even though it doesn’t produce products per se, but rather works with a variety of sell-side firms on distributed-ledger projects.  

As usual, I am grateful to this year’s judges for their time and advice: Bob Schmeider (Societe Generale), Karl Abbott (Scotiabank), David Easthope and Brad Bailey (Celent), Fred Ponzo (GreySpark Partners), Sang Lee (Aite Group), and three of my Waters colleagues: Anthony Malakian, Dan DeFrancesco and John Brazier. Write-ups by Anthony Malakian (AM), Dan DeFrancesco (DD), John Brazier (JB) and Victor Anderson (VBA).