< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud
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Jeffrey Sprecher
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Intercontinental
Exchange
Last year: 2
It was only 14 years ago that Jeffrey Sprecher started Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange, after purchasing a regional marketplace, Continental Power Exchange, in 1997. He set out to expand aggressively through acquisitions and deployment of electronic trading technology — strategic pillars that remain firmly in place following the climactic ICE–NYSE Euronext merger last November. As chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, Sprecher, 59, rules a global empire of 17 regulated exchanges and six clearinghouses. Nowhere are his moves being watched with more anticipation than in New York, as he blends ICE’s lean, highly automated approach with the mustier culture of NYSE and its iconic trading floor. In May he installed former ICE senior vice president Thomas Farley as president of NYSE Group and successor to departing CEO Duncan Niederauer. “Our timing in terms of the acquisition has been somewhat prophetic, as leadership for change around trading can come from the NYSE,” Sprecher says. “It is the mother ship that the industry is willing to rally around.”
ICE has extended its long profit-making streak into the new era: In the first quarter of this year, it earned a record $262 million on $932 million in revenue. But ICE isn’t immune to the downward trends affecting its peers. Average daily volume overall fell 15 percent in May, compared with a year earlier; commodity futures and options were off 23 percent; NYSE cash equities fell 13 percent. Cash equities were unchanged at the Euronext exchanges, which are leaving the fold (see Dominique Cerutti, No. 17) and which Sprecher believes “will be better standing alone because the European capital markets that they serve are very local markets.” In February, ICE acquired Singapore Mercantile Exchange as its first foothold in Asia, where economic expansion has resulted in “more risks that have to be hedged,” Sprecher says. “So the customer base is growing.”
The 2014 Tech 50
| 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Thomas Secunda Bloomberg | Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange | Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. | Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments | Lance Uggla Markit |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Robert Goldstein BlackRock | David Craig Thomson Reuters | Phupinder Gill CME Group | Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group | R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures | Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse | Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings | Michael Spencer ICAP | Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets | Dominique Cerutti Euronext | Ron Levi GFI Group | Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group | Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ | Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets | Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings | Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings | Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. | Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. | Peter Carr Morgan Stanley | Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse | Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| David Gershon SuperDerivatives | Chris Corrado MSCI | Joseph Squeri Citadel | Tanuja Randery BT Global Services | John Bates Software AG |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group | David Gledhill DBS Bank | Simon Garland Kx Systems | Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab | Jeff Parker EidoSearch |
| 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 |
| Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank | Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates | Tyler Kim MaplesFS | Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. | Jim Minnick eVestment |
| 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 |
| Steven O’Hanlon Numerix | Sebastián Ceria Axioma | Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute | Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners | Mas Nakachi OpenGamma |
