Jeff Sprecher
Photographer: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg
Photographer: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg
For a guy who turned a few dollars into a company that oversees everything from the New York Stock Exchange to Libor, Jeffrey Sprecher was notably unknown outside of Wall Street.
And it may have stayed that way, except that his wife, Kelly Loeffler, was nominated for a US Senate seat by Georgia to fill a seat last year.
Within a few months, the couple faced public contempt for a series of stock talks made before the coronavirus outbreak shook global markets. His wealth has now become a focal point in the second round of the January 5 election between Loeffler and Raphael Warnock, a Democrat – one of two Senate contests that day that will determine control of the House.
His company’s 22% rise this year helped make Sprecher, 65, a billionaire, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and consolidated Loeffler’s position as the richest member of Congress.
It is another reminder of how well Wall Street did during the pandemic, while the economy in general struggled, and the latest twist in Sprecher’s unlikely journey to the height of American finance. Intercontinental Exchange Inc., or ICE, as it is called, is now a $ 63 billion giant that supports much of the global financial system. It was built based on Sprecher’s negotiations, in good time and with a keen sense of where the world was going.
“I would never have thought that ICE would own the NYSE, be Leadership provider of data for the fixed income market and seeks to automate the mortgage process, all at the same time, ”said Rich Repetto, an analyst at Piper Sandler & Co. who has covered the company since its initial public offering in 2005.
Sprecher, through an ICE representative, declined to be interviewed or to comment on his net worth, which largely consists of his share of about 1% in the deal. He hasn’t spoken publicly about his wife’s candidacy, but he has made donations to several Republican lawmakers and political action committees in recent years, including at least $ 5.5 million for a super PAC that supports it.
Loeffler, 50, was an ICE executive for more than a decade and is now in a tenuous dispute with Warnock amid a record turnout. Your campaign did not comment.
Sprecher, who worked as a salesman upon leaving college, entered the energy sector in 1983. Looking for a way to protect fuel prices, he formed ICE in the 1990s, buying a bankrupt Atlanta company called Continental Power Exchange, that he modeled on an EBay for energy companies looking to buy or sell surplus electricity. He paid $ 1 or $ 1,000 for the deal – he said two years ago that he can’t remember the exact amount – and kept it afloat with his savings.
The moment was fortuitous. ICE was launched just before its biggest rival, Enron Corp., went bankrupt.
Sprecher went on to do a dizzying number of deals. He bought rival exchanges and also expanded the ICE to areas such as commodity futures, fixed income and clearinghouses, which are in the middle of each trade. The purchase of NYSE Euronext, which included the vaunted New York Stock Exchange, gave ICE control of London-based Liffe, which offered interest rate derivatives trading.
In 2014, ICE assumed responsibility for the London interbank offer fee, or Libor, which is embedded in a series of financial contracts, ranging from credit card fees to derivative pricing. And this year it bought Ellie Mae Inc., which processes more than 40% of all new residential mortgages in the United States, a booming business now with record lending costs.
At the heart of the company is data, which it collects from customers, classifies and analyzes and then sells back to those same customers. He supports benchmarks for everything from crude oil products to interest rates.
“If I were starting this company today, I would probably call it the Intercontinental Massively Scalable Network and Database Company, because that is what we are,” Sprecher said in February by telephone with analysts.
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with ICE to provide financial analysis, data and fixed income information.
Loeffler joined ICE in 2002 to lead investor relations and later took on communications and marketing as well – responsibilities generally split between three positions. She and Sprecher were married in 2004. They call themselves workaholics and have no children.
Loeffler was active in Republican circles for many years, but he never ran for public office. But when Johnny Isakson, the state’s senior senator, left office in 2019 for health reasons, she sought and won the temporary appointment of Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, and her gender and financial well-being probably play a role in her decision.
The couple’s wealth, distributed on a page of 99 The financial disclosure form that lists everything from rented properties to a private plane was analyzed after she released a series of stock negotiations that began the day she and other senators received a confidential briefing on the coronavirus outbreak.
Loeffler said that the couple’s independent financial advisors made the negotiations without their knowledge and that the investment portfolio will be liquidated. The Justice Department withdrew an investigation of transactions by her and some other lawmakers and the Senate ethics panel itself cleared her of any wrongdoing.
She serves on four Senate committees, including the Agriculture Committee, which oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The agency regulates the derivatives market, including many aspects of ICE’s business growth.
Sprecher had no idea that he had finished building the company. In February, he gave up on an opening with EBay Inc., which had perplexed analysts. The acquisition of Ellie Mae was announced just six months later.
“I really don’t know how to run a company that is not growing,” he said in a podcast in May. “Part of running a growing company is like the duck with its legs moving very quickly underneath. I really wouldn’t know how to float. “