Banking & Finance
Red hot
How Jeff Sprecher turned ICE into gold
By Kristy J. O’Hara
Smart Business | August 2009
Page 1 of 4
Jeff Sprecher grew IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) by more than $700 million over the last five years. Yes, you read correctly — $700 million.
While it may surprise you, it doesn’t surprise him. When he founded the company in 2000, while there were many unknowns, the one thing for certain was that ICE would be a high-growth company.
By 2004, it hit $108 million, and last year, it became an $813 million company, operating regulated global futures exchanges and over-the-counter markets for agricultural, energy, equity index and currency contracts as well as credit derivatives. While it’s great that ICE has been so successful in such a short period of time, it’s not enough for Sprecher — or his shareholders.
“We have a luxury of being a growth company, and we have the luxury of having shareholders who have bought our stock because they want to own a growth company, so the expectation is that we are going to grow,” says the chairman and CEO.
With that kind of expectation, he does his best to get the right people in place to make that happen, handle conflict in a healthy way and then also take calculated risks to move ICE forward.
