< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge
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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
1. Jeffrey Sprecher 2. Catherine Bessant 3. Phupinder Gill 4. Lance Uggla 5. Robert Goldstein |
6. Shawn Edwards & 7. R. Martin Chavez 8. Deborah Hopkins 9. Stephen Neff 10. Adena Friedman |
11. David Craig 12. Daniel Coleman 13. Michael Spencer 14. Michael Bodson 15. Charles Li |
16. Chris Concannon 17. Christopher Perretta 18. Antoine Shagoury 19. Kevin Rhein 20. Neil Katz |
21. Lee Olesky 22. Richard McVey 23. Seth Merrin 24. Robert Alexander 25. Frank Bisignano |
26. John Marcante 27. Joseph Squeri 28. Lou Eccleston 29. Claude Honegger 30. Chris Corrado |
31. David Gledhill 32. John Bates 33. Michael Cooper 34. Gary Scholten 35. Sunil Hirani |
36. Hauke Stars 37. Brian Conlon 38. Jim Minnick 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais 40. Tyler Kim |
41. Jim McGuire 42. Steven O’Hanlon 43. Sebastián Ceria 44. Yasuki Okai 45. Stephane Dubois |
46. Mazy Dar 47. Brian Sentance 48. Mas Nakachi 49. John Lehner 50. Jock Percy |
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