US 30 Under 30 In Finance 2019: The Top Young Quants, Dealmakers And Crypto Entrepreneurs
With the rise of data-driven investing, fintech and cryptocurrencies and the continued surge of assets into alternative strategies comes a new set of leaders reshaping Wall Street
Opportunity abounds for those who are bringing quantitative skills to the world’s largest financial firms or using blockchain technology to reinvent entire markets, and they can be seen on this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance list.
The rising stars in finance are inventing new modes of central banking and payment technologies, building new business lines at major hedge funds and private equity funds, and guiding strategy at large public companies. They can be found inside successful firms like Bridgewater Associates, Blackstone Group and PointState Capital or running trading desks at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Some have already created billion-dollar businesses. The changing contours of finance also means this year’s 30 Under 30 Finance list is hands-down Forbes’ most diverse. Some 40% of list-makers are female, and nearly a quarter emigrated to the United States.
At 26, Nader Al-Naji, a Princeton-educated son of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, has raised $133 million from the likes of Stanley Druckenmiller, Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Ventures to develop a cryptocurrency, Basis, which aims to use blockchain technology to replace central banks in countries suffering from currency volatility. Al-Naji’s “stablecoin” is pegged to the U.S. dollar by increasing and decreasing in supply depending on demand. Thus, it is meant to offer new, more stable currencies for people in countries where inflation or political instability roil financial transactions.
When the world’s top hedge funds want to bolster their quantitative strategies, they’re leaning on the skills of Millennial-aged data scientists. At PointState Capital, Peter Maa oversees the $9.5-billion-in-assets hedge fund’s fundamental discretionary macro research. A China expert and managing director, Maa is also building PointState Capital’s in-house data science team, which uses the current explosion of big data to uncover opportunity.
Richard Lee, 29, heads systematic engineering at BlueMountain Capital, overseeing the technology platform that is the backbone of its systematic investing strategies. Lee’s team builds custom data analysis, natural language processing algorithms and signal research across all the $20-billion-in-assets hedge fund’s strategies. At Bridgewater Associates, Daniel Hochman, 29, is a leading environment, social and governance researcher for the world’s largest hedge fund. A member of Bridgewater’s corporate strategy leadership group, Hochman has also been critical in some of the firm’s most important research projects, including those on the Chinese and Japanese economies, and interest rates.
Wall Street’s largest banks and asset managers are also well represented on this year’s 30 Under 30 Finance list. Laura Wong Hon Chan, 29, an interest rate options trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, last year helped lead a 40% increase in trading volume for exotics products. Raised in Mauritius, she does market-making and risk management of dollar-denominated interest rate derivatives ranging in complexity from vanilla options to complex structured swaps. Jordan Zarilli, 29, a vice president at Goldman Sachs, runs equity derivatives for financials and consumer companies while overseeing the desk’s risk.
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In private equity, Steven Marangos, 29, has invested $1 billion as part of the Tactical Opportunities group at Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm. Marangos has also played a big role in Blackstone’s push into insurance and the formation of its insurance solutions unit, working on a two person team to lead its investment in insurer Fidelity & Guarantee Life. Lakshya Madhok, 29, has helped grow a strong-performing $9-billion-in-assets structured credit investing team at Bain Capital Credit, directly overseeing a $1.4 billion portfolio of investments. Christine Boyd, 28, has led the expansion of Apollo Global’s real estate debt platform on the West Coast, closing over $4 billion in loan deals.
At TPG, Akash Pradhan, 29, is at the fore of the firm’s move into social impact investments and taking a leadership role in the $2.1 billion Rise Fund’s push into education technology investments, handling recent deals in DreamBox Learning and Renaissance Learning. As a technology investor in TPG’s $3.7 billion growth fund, he’s also worked on high-profile deals like Box and GreenSky.
In financial technology, 30 Under 30 list makers are building breakthrough companies that aim to solve some of the biggest points of friction in the financial system. Brex, cofounded by Pedro Franceschi, 22, and Henrique Dubugras, 23, has raised $213 million and ascended to “unicorn” status by offering a novel credit card that banks tech startups based on how much money they raise. These entrepreneurs count Peter Thiel and Yuri Milner’s DST Global among their backers, and they sold their prior venture Pagar.me for tens of millions of dollars.
Samantha Whitmore, 27, heads engineering at Kensho Technologies, which was recently acquired by S&P Global for $550 million and is a pioneer in applying machine learning and natural language processing to investing. Whitmore oversees a 10-person engineering team and helped build Kensho’s ubiquitous scoring engine. Charlie Javice, 26, is the founder of Frank, which aims to improve the $1.5 trillion student loan market by making the application process easier and faster. With $16 million in funding, Javice’s company already has helped 300,000 students apply for financial aid.
Loek Janssen, 29, came to the U.S. from the Netherlands and studied at Stanford. Now as cofounder and CTO of Nova Credit, he's making software that lets immigrants share their home-country credit history with financial service providers, giving them better access to credit. The startup has raised $20 million from VCs like General Catalyst and plans to fill a big void in the marketplace. Lightning Labs cofounder Olaoluwa Osuntokun, 25, an immigrant from Nigeria, has raised $2.5 million to increase the speed of transactions on the bitcoin blockchain, making it a more viable system for small, Venmo-like transactions.
Machine-learning engineer JB Rubinovitz, 26, cofounded Bail Bloc to create a blockchain-based system in which mined cryptocurrency can be used to pay for bail for those who can’t afford it. Hunter Horsley, 28, CEO of Bitwise Asset Management, is trying to build the Vanguard of cryptocurrencies. Bitwise’s four cryptocurrency indices are currently used by over 600 multifamily offices.
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As large public corporations turn to dealmaking to drive their growth, they’re counting on 30 Under 30 Finance list makers. Mikko Salovaara, 26, is the CFO of the U.S. Zone at Kraft Heinz, the $66-billion-market-cap foods giant backed by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway. Salovaara is responsible for all aspects of finance within the U.S. for the company, leading a team of about 300. Previously he was CFO of Kraft Heinz in Asia and an analyst with 3G Capital in New York, advising the boards and management of other holdings like AB-InBev and Restaurant Brands International.
At Barry Diller’s $15-billion-market-cap internet conglomerate IAC, Michelle Arbov, 28, has played a big role in growing its online home services business as a vice president of M&A. Arbov helped scale the company’s HomeAdvisor business through acquisitions and played an important role in its purchase of Angie’s List. Now publicly traded, ANGI Homeservices carries a $9 billion market cap and Arbov’s been instrumental in recent deals like its purchase of home services company Handy.
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