The 2015 Tech 50: Michael Spencer

The ICAP CEO jumps to No. 13 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

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< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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13
Michael Spencer
Chief Executive Officer
ICAP
Last year: 14

There was never anything tentative about Michael Spencer’s careerlong drive into the automated future of finance. He says that even 30 to 40 years ago he saw that leadership in financial services goes hand in hand with “technology enablement,” which in turn is “essential for disruption and innovation.” By the early 2000s he was in a position to act on those ideas, having created and climbed to the top of the biggest interdealer brokerage, London-based ICAP. The Internet bubble had burst, but Spencer’s vision of an industry transformed by electronic trading motivated a series of strategic bets — an early tone-setter being the $240 million acquisition of fixed-income platform BrokerTec Global in 2003 — that he has never hedged. “We didn’t cut back on investments in technology, even in hard times,” says the 60-year-old CEO — and the recent postcrisis years of economic and regulatory uncertainty were hard on trading businesses. “We are always thinking long-term.” Since 2007, ICAP has spent a total of £1.6 billion ($2.3 billion) on technology. In the 12 months ended March 31, new-initiative investments in electronic markets, posttrade and information services rose by £1 million year-over-year, to £43 million. New-wave business lines, including EBS BrokerTec (combining fixed income and foreign exchange) and risk-focused Traiana and TriOptima, are generating three fourths of group profits, which were £229 million pretax in the last fiscal year. As far as ICAP has come in a decade, “we still have a long way to go,” says Spencer. He uses Euclid Opportunities, a strategic incubation fund ICAP formed in 2011, as a lens on what’s next in fintech. So pleased is he with portfolio holdings like OpenGamma (see Mas Nakachi, No. 48) and hedge fund analytics provider ENSO Financial that “we’d consider investing more, even at higher valuations.”

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


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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