Tower Research Capital

The same engineer who built Tower Research Capital also built LimeWire. Mark Gorton, a digital signal processing specialist turned Credit Suisse bond trader, founded Tower in February 1998 with Alistair Brown, then went on to create the file-sharing network and a brokerage he later sold to Wedbush.

Tower runs a pod model: dozens of independent quantitative teams trade their own strategies on shared infrastructure spanning more than 150 venues, across any asset class and any horizon from microseconds to months. Its trading subsidiary, Latour Trading, is the name that turns up in the regulatory filings. Gorton handed the chief executive role to technologist Albert An in 2019 and moved to chairman, but the firm keeps the engineering-first stamp he gave it.