Technology Leader Bruce Ferguson Joins Fusion Team
Fusion is excited to add an incredible asset to our team in Bruce Ferguson, an accomplished technology leader in the financial services space. Bruce will serve as Fusion's Director of Technology to continue to help us pave advancements in the industry. Read more about Bruce's experience below!
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Mr. Bruce Ferguson is a strategic technology leader, COO, CIO, divisional President and creator of innovative software products (proprietary modeling, trading systems, and revenue generators), with 25 years of experience in M&A activities, creating and growing profitable new businesses, and turning around technology organizations across global, national and regional platforms. His expertise in strategic product direction, business development, client relationship management/retention, and integration activities informs all his work. He is also the co-author of seven patents spanning multiple industries.
Serving as SVP, Managing Director at Nexa Technologies after The Desjardins Group’s acquisition from Penson in 2013, Bruce worked closely with the Nexa Board to integrate it into Desjardins. Leading an organization with $10M+ in revenue and 45 staff members in 3 states, he drove strategic product direction and development of the next generation products to put Nexa two years ahead of competition (cancelled when Desjardins decided to shutdown Nexa operations), managed the difficult, 18-month wind-down of all clients and operations.
From 2009 to 2013, Bruce served as Nexa President, a Penson Worldwide company, overseeing $21M revenue, 125 staff members, and 5 offices in two countries. In this role, he maintained and expanded US market share by creating delivery mechanisms that drove on-time delivery; brought the company from a $10M loss to break-even; restructured it from a technology to a product- and customer- focused one; repaired and extended broken relationships with all clients; and actively managed Desjardins’ Nexa acquisition process. Concurrently (2008 – 2010), Bruce served as Global CIO, leading a staff of 225 in 6 offices (3 countries). He created/led a global, shared technology service, optimized the varied technologies and resources within four Penson companies, and realized cost reductions of ~20% by restructuring and streamlining the technology organization.
In a previous role at Penson, Bruce expanded and managed Penson’s proprietary trading while serving as VP, Quantitative Execution Group (2003 – 2008). He built and led a new proprietary trading team—some of the team members had already created and operated a world-class empirical modeling and trading system under Bruce’s previous leadership at Pavilion Technologies, and some were professional traders/content experts. The team improved the software and greatly contributed to its profitability for five subsequent years.
Before joining Penson, Bruce co-founded and served as Development Manager for Pavilion Technologies (1992 – 2003), a company specializing in advanced control and modeling software. He actively participated in the creation of Pavilion’s revenue generators (their success eventually led to Rockwell Automation’s Pavilion acquisition), facilitated all onsite installation by creating product installation and integration teams and procedures, and led the team that created the proprietary trading software that led to Penson’s acquisition of the software group.
Bruce is the co-author of seven patents spanning multiple industries. He is an active member of Meals on Wheels in his community, and is a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity International. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, where he was involved in IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, Eta Kappa Nu, the IEEE’s honor society, and served as president of the Flying Club.
