Company Spotlight: Capitolis Connects Capital Markets

Capital markets do not run out of money in the abstract. Capacity gets trapped inside regulatory requirements, counterparty limits, fragmented portfolios, financing costs, and institutions that cannot always put the right balance sheet behind the right trade. Capitolis builds technology for that hidden plumbing.

The New York-based fintech connects banks, asset managers, hedge funds, and other institutions through Capital Marketplace and Portfolio Optimization. CEO and founder Gil Mandelzis leads the company alongside Executive Chairman and co-founder Tom Glocer, President Okan Pekin, and CTO Murugan Manickam. Capitolis now sits at a useful point in its evolution: the platform has moved beyond one optimization product into a broader network for capital, funding, risk, and market infrastructure.

What Capitolis Does

Capitolis addresses a basic institutional problem: financial firms can have demand, clients, and market opportunity while the cost or structure of their balance sheet limits what they can do. Its Capital Marketplace helps clients access more diverse sources and uses of capital. Its Portfolio Optimization business helps firms reduce exposures and the capital, funding, margin, and operational costs attached to trading portfolios.

The platform works across networks of counterparties rather than treating each institution as an isolated software account. That is the strategic difference. Optimization becomes more valuable as more participants, portfolios, and asset classes can be coordinated safely, while marketplace products depend on matching institutions that need financial resources with institutions able to supply them.

The Founding Logic

Capitolis was founded in 2017 by Gil Mandelzis, Tom Glocer, and Igor Teleshevsky. Mandelzis previously founded Traiana and later led EBS BrokerTec, while Glocer spent 11 years as CEO of Reuters and Thomson Reuters. The founders came from the systems and institutions where market connectivity, post-trade processing, and trust decide whether a product becomes infrastructure.

That background shaped Capitolis around collaboration rather than disruption theater. Banks cannot simply discard regulated workflows because a cleaner interface arrives. They need controlled ways to reduce risk, free capital, find financing, and coordinate across counterparties without weakening the safeguards that keep markets functioning.

A Network Expanding Across Markets

Capitolis has extended its footprint through product development and acquisitions. In December 2024, it acquired Capitalab for $46M, adding Rates portfolio compression and margin optimization. Capitolis later reported that Rates Initial Margin and Capital reductions increased 3.5 times after the acquisition.

The company also reported record 2025 performance across FX, Rates, and Credit. Product launches included Futures Porting and FX Initial Margin, while Novation gained straight-through processing. These are company-reported operating indicators, not audited financial results, but they show where Capitolis is investing and where clients are asking the network to carry more work.

Why eSecLending Matters

Capitolis' pending $200M acquisition of eSecLending would add a 26-year securities-lending operation and direct relationships with pension funds, insurers, asset managers, banks, and prime brokers. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

The logic is larger than adding another product. Capitolis already works on the bank side of capital and balance-sheet constraints. eSecLending adds institutional asset owners with securities that can be lent into the market. Bringing those networks together could give Capitolis a stronger position across securities lending, repo, financing, and portfolio optimization, provided the company can integrate operations without losing the trust each business has earned.

Leadership for the Next Phase

Mandelzis and Glocer remain the company's founder-level anchors, while the operating bench has expanded around growth and integration. Okan Pekin joined as President after more than 35 years at Citi, where he led businesses including Securities Services, Equity Prime Finance, Futures and Clearing, and FX Prime Brokerage. Murugan Manickam became CTO in September 2026 after 17 years at Bank of America and now leads global engineering plus Capitolis' data and AI strategy.

That experience matters because capital-markets infrastructure has to survive integration work that ordinary enterprise software can postpone. Data models, counterparty rules, regulatory obligations, transaction workflows, and institutional service expectations must line up before network effects become durable.

Funding and Strategic Alignment

Capitolis has disclosed at least $456M in equity funding through its October 2026 Series E, along with approximately $100M of new debt. Its latest equity investors include Citi, Bank of America, Nomura, Tradeweb Markets, Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan, State Street, and UBS.

That syndicate gives Capitolis more than capital. It places major market participants close to product development and strategic decisions, which can improve feedback and distribution. It can also create tension because a platform serving many institutions must remain useful across a network rather than bend around the preferences of a few powerful shareholders.

Culture and Hiring as an Operating Signal

Capitolis' careers page lists active opportunities and describes its people as “Super Smart, Badass, Good Humans.” The language is deliberately blunt, but the underlying operating model is clear: quality thinking, ownership, direct feedback, execution, collaboration, and curiosity. The company maintains offices in New York, London, and Tel Aviv and describes an in-office culture with flexibility.

Hiring now is tied to a broader operating challenge. Capitolis is adding products, integrating acquisitions, expanding asset classes, and serving institutions that expect reliability before speed becomes impressive. The people joining the company are not merely building features; they are helping different market participants trust the same system with more consequential work.

What Capitolis Signals for Fintech

Capitolis represents a mature version of fintech's infrastructure thesis. The opportunity is not to place a shiny layer over old markets. It is to coordinate regulated institutions well enough that capital, risk, and liquidity can move through the system with less waste.

That job gets harder as the network grows. Every acquisition adds capability, clients, and data, but it also adds integration pressure. Capitolis' next advantage will come from proving that its expanding collection of businesses behaves like one trusted market network, with banks and asset owners able to meet on infrastructure built for both sides.