How Alexander built the fortune
Alexander Gerko's wealth comes almost entirely from XTX Markets, the trading business he set up in London in 2015. XTX is a non-bank market maker: it continuously quotes buy and sell prices to banks, brokers, asset managers and trading venues, earning a small spread on an enormous volume of transactions. Unlike a hedge fund, it does not take in outside money from clients. It trades its own capital, and its profits flow to a small group of owners, with Gerko holding the dominant share.
The firm's edge is quantitative. Pricing decisions are made by statistical models and machine learning systems that digest market data and forecast short term price moves. Gerko built the company around researchers and engineers rather than traditional dealers, and XTX invested heavily in computing capacity, including its own data centre infrastructure, to train and run those models. Starting in foreign exchange, where electronic trading had already displaced much of the old voice market, XTX became one of the largest liquidity providers in spot currencies within a few years and then pushed into equities, government and corporate bonds, and commodities.
Because the business is highly profitable relative to its headcount, the annual dividends paid to its owners have been substantial. Gerko's fortune therefore reflects both the value of the firm itself and years of accumulated distributions from it.
Companies and holdings
XTX Markets remains the core of Gerko's holdings. The group operates from London and has regulated entities and offices in other financial centres, including in Europe, the United States and Asia, allowing it to trade on a wide range of exchanges and electronic platforms. Its main activities are:
- market making in spot foreign exchange, one of its original strengths
- electronic trading in listed equities and exchange traded funds
- quoting in government and corporate bonds
- commodities and related derivatives
Gerko serves as co-chief executive and is the firm's main shareholder. He keeps a low public profile outside the business and has not built a broader conglomerate, so his holdings are concentrated in a single, privately owned company.
The economics of this kind of business are unusual. Each individual trade earns very little, so profitability depends on scale, speed and accurate risk management across thousands of instruments at once. That makes the firm's research staff and technology its most valuable assets, and XTX has kept its headcount comparatively small while expanding the range of markets it covers.
Early life and career
Gerko was born in December 1979 in the Soviet Union and showed an early aptitude for mathematics. He studied the subject at Moscow State University, where he trained in applied mathematics, before moving into finance. Like many mathematically trained graduates of his generation, he was drawn to the quantitative side of trading, where model building and programming skills were becoming more valuable than a traditional sales background.
After relocating to the United Kingdom he worked as a quantitative trader in London, including at Deutsche Bank, and later joined GSA Capital, a systematic investment manager. At GSA he helped run its foreign exchange trading activities, which gave him direct experience of building algorithmic strategies in currency markets. That work formed the starting point for XTX Markets, which began as a separate business focused on electronic market making and grew rapidly once it was independent. Gerko has since become a British citizen.
Philanthropy and public life
Most of Gerko's public giving has been directed at mathematics. Through XTX Markets he has funded programmes that support mathematically talented school pupils in the United Kingdom, including enrichment schemes, competitions and teacher training, as well as grants to institutions that work on maths education. He has spoken publicly about wanting to widen access to advanced mathematics for children from less advantaged backgrounds.
The firm has also backed research at the meeting point of artificial intelligence and mathematics, including a dedicated fund for projects that use AI tools in mathematical discovery. Gerko has said he intends to give away much of his wealth over time. He gives few interviews, and his personal life remains largely private.