Jeff Sprecher is founder, chair and chief executive officer of Intercontinental Exchange and a pioneer of digital networks and the electronification of trading and marketplaces.
Reflecting his unwavering vision and leadership, ICE has grown from a little-known startup in 2000 to a Fortune 500 company. At the core of the company are the exchanges and clearinghouses that it operates around the world, but in recent years it has expanded into providing a wide range of fixed income and data services, and most recently it has embarked on the digital transformation of the US mortgage industry.
Sprecher’s trajectory began after he recognized inefficiencies in the US power market and resolved to fix them. After buying the failing Atlanta company Continental Power Exchange for $1,000 in 1997, he enlisted major banks, energy companies and utilities to his cause. In 2000, Intercontinental Exchange was born, offering an internet-based platform for OTC energy trading. In 2005, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ICE.
From its humble beginnings, a string of innovations and acquisitions quickly followed. In 2001, ICE purchased the International Petroleum Exchange in the UK. Then it acquired the New York Board of Trade in 2007, Creditex in 2008, the Clearing Corporation in 2009, the Climate Exchange in 2010 and the NYSE itself in 2013.
The deals Sprecher put together created what are now known as ICE Futures Europe, ICE Clear Europe, ICE Futures US, and ICE Clear US, and led to an expansion of the NYSE into NYSE Group.
ICE’s 2015 acquisition of one of the leading financial market data vendors, Interactive Data Corporation, and a succession of deals in the mortgage space – Ellie Mae in 2020 and Black Knight in September 2023 – coalesced into two other business segments: ICE Fixed Income and Data Services and ICE Mortgage Technology.
Sprecher is often credited with “seeing around corners” in the intersecting world of finance and technology. Now in its third decade, ICE delivers over $8 billion in annual revenue, with market capitalization of over $80 billion, built on Sprecher’s dealmaking, good timing and keen sense of where the world is headed.
