Markets Media Group’s second-annual Global Markets Choice Awards will be held Thursday, June 4, 2026 at the Central Park Boathouse in New York.

The Markets Choice Awards launched in 2013 as an event to recognize and celebrate the best of the best in capital markets trading and technology. The Markets Choice Awards was rebranded to the Global Markets Choice Awards in 2025 to more closely align with the globalization of markets.

Ahead of this year’s GMCAs, we are featuring retrospectives of select past award winners.

Markets Media’s inaugural Markets Choice Awards program was held on February 21, 2013, at Arena Nightclub in Manhattan’s theater district.

Google Gemini says of the event: “It was the first, and it was a more formal, darker event compared to later iterations.”

AI is correct here in that the venue (which has since closed) was indeed dark and nightclubby (note the reference is to the lighting – the event wasn’t at all moody, gloomy or somber!). But AI isn’t fully correct in saying it was a more formal event – while business dress code has loosened broadly speaking, black tie was added for later MCA programs.

Innovation is of course the lifeblood of capital markets trading and technology, and innovation has been a key theme in all of our awards programs.

In 2013, Benjamin Sylvester III, then Head of Americas Equity Trading at JP Morgan Asset Management, won ‘Most Innovative Buy-Side Trader’ for his team’s work in profiling portfolio managers’ alpha styles, enabling traders to develop more tailored strategies to improve execution. The methodology was subsequently picked up by other investment managers.

Sylvester spent a decade at JP Morgan and later was CEO of Cerberus Technology Solutions. He is currently a private equity operating partner, board member, and AI advisor, according to his LinkedIn profile.