The 2015 Tech 50: Jeffrey Sprecher

The Intercontinental Exchange chairman and CEO remains in the No. 1 spot on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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1
Jeffrey Sprecher
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Intercontinental Exchange
Last year: 1

On the slim foundation of a regional power exchange that he bought in 1997 for $1 as a proving ground for electronic trading innovation, Jeffrey Sprecher formed Intercontinental Exchange in 2000. Within a decade the entrepreneur had lived the dream of becoming a captain of industry as ICE, fueled by several more sizable, flawlessly executed acquisitions, grew into a global force in energy, commodities and derivatives. And that was before the $11 billion takeover of NYSE Euronext in 2013 lifted ICE to its current perch atop the exchange world. Sprecher, however, has not lost touch with his inner disrupter, or with a key strategic ingredient that got him this far. “The risk of adopting technology early is one that I don’t mind taking,” the 60-year-old says. “Technology allowed us to scale the business quickly — it scales in ways that people can’t.” ICE injected scale and efficiency into NYSE; it replaced the legacy Liffe derivatives platform last year. In New York, where a technical glitch halted trading for more than three hours on July 8, ICE is implementing Pillar, which will consolidate five equity and options systems into one as it rolls out between this quarter and 2017. Maintaining a stellar earnings record — first-quarter profit per share from continuing operations, at $3.06, jumped 26 percent year-over-year — Sprecher remains acquisitive. SuperDerivatives, purchased in October 2014 for $350 million, is a “big data play,” he says, with “tools for deep data analysis” that are in the same realm of analytic and valuation capabilities that ICE brings to its administration of Libor, gold and swap benchmarks. In January, NYSE took a minority stake in Bitcoin wallet company Coinbase, followed in May by its launch of the NYSE Bitcoin Index (NYXBT). “I am personally involved” in the investment, Sprecher says. Cryptocurrency and the associated blockchain technology “could be revolutionary. We need to be in that dialogue.”

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”

See also “ICE’s Jeffrey Sprecher Has Built a Global Trading Powerhouse” and watch an exclusive video interview with Jeff Sprecher on why NYSE is such an important part of his company’s revenue model.


The 2015 Tech 50

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1. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange

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2. Catherine Bessant
Bank of America Corp.

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3. Phupinder Gill
CME Group

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4. Lance Uggla
Markit

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5. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock

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6. Shawn Edwards &
Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg

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7. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group

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8. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures

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9. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments

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10. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq OMX Group

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11. David Craig
Thomson Reuters

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12. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings

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13. Michael Spencer
ICAP

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14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

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15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

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16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets

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17. Christopher Perretta
State Street Corp.

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18. Antoine Shagoury
London Stock Exchange Group

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19. Kevin Rhein
Wells Fargo & Co.

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20. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.

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21. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets

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22. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings

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23. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings

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24. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.

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25. Frank Bisignano
First Data Corp.

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26. John Marcante
Vanguard Group

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27. Joseph Squeri
Citadel

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28. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group

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29. Claude Honegger
Credit Suisse

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30. Chris Corrado
MSCI

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31. David Gledhill
DBS Bank

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32. John Bates
Software AG

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33. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz

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34. Gary Scholten
Principal Financial Group

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35. Sunil Hirani
trueEX Group

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36. Hauke Stars
Deutsche BÖrse

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37. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives

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38. Jim Minnick
eVestment

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39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais

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40. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS

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41. Jim McGuire
Charles Schwab Corp.

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42. Steven O’Hanlon
Numerix

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43. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma

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44. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America

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45. Stephane Dubois
Xignite

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46. Mazy Dar
OpenFin

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47. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software

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48. Mas Nakachi
OpenGamma

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49. John Lehner
BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group

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50. Jock Percy
Perseus


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