Doug Cifu

Doug Cifu co-founded Virtu Financial with Vincent Viola, a former New York Mercantile Exchange chairman, building it into one of the world's largest electronic market-making firms. Virtu makes markets in thousands of securities globally across equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities, acting as a principal using its own capital to provide continuous two-sided quotes. The firm's extraordinary profitability became internationally famous when it filed for its IPO in 2014: its S-1 filing revealed that Virtu had been profitable in 1,237 out of 1,238 trading days, losing money on just one day in over five years. This statistic became the focal point of intense public debate about whether HFT market-making firms were providing a legitimate social service or simply extracting rent from slower market participants. Cifu led Virtu's 2015 IPO and its 2017 acquisition of KCG Holdings — a $1.4 billion deal that made Virtu the largest retail equity market maker alongside Citadel Securities. Cifu has been one of the most vocal defenders of HFT in public debates, arguing that Virtu's market-making activities reduce bid-ask spreads and improve market liquidity for investors. Virtu generates approximately $5+ billion in annual trading revenue.