AFTAs 2014: Best Technology Executive, Buy Side—Bill Murphy, Blackstone

This individual award has never been as well contested and as diverse as it proved in 2014. Included among the finalists’ firms were a major university endowment, an insurer, a hedge fund, and an asset manager, in addition to Blackstone. Murphy and fellow finalist Uche Abolgu—CTO at Utimco in Austin, Texas—are even old friends. The choice was quite literally that close.

So what distinguishes Murphy, besides his self-admittedly unshakable resemblance to Steve Carell, and sense of humor to match? For one thing, it’s the space he’s in.

Private equity is more influential than ever in today’s investment environment, and has traveled a very long way from its roots when limited partners (LPs) in a fund asked for relatively little performance data of general partners (GPs) like Blackstone, both in terms of depth and frequency. Those days are well over, and the firm knew it needed a ringer when it hired Murphy to remake its infrastructure and innovations team.

With more private equity shops competing today, and many institutional investors preferring to keep their GP relationships as few and tidy as possible, sound technology is a requirement for attracting new capital. And Blackstone’s BX suite has rapidly evolved to match this requirement, remapping workflows, enhancing communication and reporting, and adding new and often exotic private investment types along the way.

What makes Murphy’s role ideally fit to Blackstone, however, is his entrepreneurial background—he was formerly a co-founder of Capital IQ before its acquisition by S&P—and highly successful guidance of its fintech investment program, which has funded or helped spin off more than 10 start-ups since its inception, most of them under Murphy’s watch. In many ways, the CTO represents the breed of technologist that investment managers now need to thrive: not only a strategy expert with the CFO’s trust and ear, but someone who can transact with a new group—and in some cases, new generation—of external partners to push things forward.

What makes Murphy’s role ideally fit to Blackstone is his entrepreneurial background and highly successful guidance of its fintech investment program, which has funded or helped spin off more than 10 start-ups since its inception, most of them under Murphy’s watch.

Indeed, it’s a model that most global sell-side firms are now actively pursuing, but one that few buy sides have the resources and unique leadership to pull off. In Murphy, Blackstone has found a genuine exception.