Lee Olesky

Lee Olesky is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tradeweb Markets and serves on the board of directors.

Olesky is a central figure in the development of global electronic fixed income trading stemming from his role in the creation of a pair of industry-leading, technology-based, fixed income trading platforms. He has been named to Institutional Investor annual rankings of the industry’s top technological innovators eleven times and is regularly called upon for comment on issues related to the markets, technology and regulation.

Prior to Tradeweb, Olesky served as Chief Operating Officer for the Fixed Income Americas division at Credit Suisse First Boston. He co-founded Tradeweb in 1996, assembled a consortium of investors, and served as the first chairman of the board of directors. Following that, he co-founded BrokerTec in 1999 and relocated to London where he served as the founding CEO prior to the sale to ICAP.

Olesky subsequently rejoined Tradeweb as President in 2002 and remained in London where he drove the growth of trading in Europe and expansion into derivatives and Asia. Olesky was directly involved in the sale of Tradeweb in 2004 to the Thomson Corporation, later renamed Thomson Reuters, as well as securing additional investments from a group of bulge bracket investment banks in 2008. During that period, the acquisitions of LeverTrade and Hilliard Farber & Co. accelerated Tradeweb’s entry into the retail and wholesale markets, respectively.

Olesky was named CEO of Tradeweb in 2008 and returned to New York. Under the growth strategy, Tradeweb undertook new initiatives, acquisitions and hires to build out asset classes, client sectors, trading protocols, data and analytics, and regions. In that time, Tradeweb acquired BondDesk in 2013 to further expand in the retail market. Derivatives trading rapidly grew on Tradeweb’s swap execution facilities (SEFs) in the U.S. and multilateral trading facility (MTF) in Europe. Tradeweb began providing institutional clients with streamlined, electronic access to the China bond market, the world’s third largest by notional value outstanding, through China Bond Connect in 2017 and later opened an office in Shanghai.

In all, Olesky has led Tradeweb from an early-stage startup with $8 million in financing to the recent initial public offering as a mid-cap growth company. Olesky was named CEO of the Year by Markets Media in 2019 and received the BritishAmerican Business Entrepreneurial Award in 2016. He currently serves on the CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee as well as the board of Credit Benchmark, a provider of consensus credit risk analytics. In addition, Olesky is a member of the Leadership Council of Habitat for Humanity New York City.

Olesky earned a bachelor of arts in history from Tulane University and a juris doctorate from George Washington University. He has served on a number of private and public company boards as well as lectured at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, and Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.