The arrest of Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs employee at the centre of a criminal case involving the unsanctioned downloading of sophisticated trading software codes, has thrust the largely unglamorous world of computerised equity trading into the spotlight.
Mr Aleynikov, 39, had just started work at Teza Technologies in Chicago, a start-up founded by a former trader with the Citadel hedge fund, when he was arrested on Friday and accused of theft of “trade secrets” and the transportation of those “secrets” to a computer server in Germany.
Mr Aleynikov maintains his innocence and is free on $750,000 bail. According to court documents, he does not appear to have transferred any of the downloaded codes to his new employer.