Vincent Annunziata

During his time as a senior commodities trader and risk analyst, Vincent Annunziata noticed an alarming trend: like any other trading outfit, his company was prone to human error. He was working for Phibro – formerly the commodities trading division of Salomon Smith Barney and now part of Citigroup – where he spent 11 years.

Phibro’s problem was that too many people were employed in laborious functions such as trade reconciliation, positioning and accounting, so the company took action before operational risk glitches could do any damage.

“ I was asked to work on building a system that would bring together all the functions of a diverse trading operation, streamlining front-, middle- and back-office functions,” Annunziata says. And he liked the results so much that he bought the rights to the technology