The 2014 Tech 50: Michael Spencer

July 08, 2014

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< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

Michael Spencer

Chief ExecutiveOfficer

ICAP

Last year: 16

During the Internet boom, while many firms were staking out early positions in e-commerce, Michael Spencer was wheeling and dealing the old-fashioned way, cobbling together businesses that became London-based Garban-Intercapital in 1999. The interdealer brokerage, the world’s biggest, was renamed ICAP in 2001, and by then CEO Spencer was on his way to becoming one of the industry’s most vocal and persistent technology proponents — undaunted despite what he describes as “ongoing structural challenges” and “extremely difficult trading conditions” that drove ICAP’s revenue down 5 percent in the year ended March 31, to £1.4 billion ($2.3 billion). Although traditional voice brokerage “will continue to be essential” for complex or bespoke transactions, the 59-year-old says, “I recognized that the future was in electronic broking, posttrade and information services.” Indeed, those parts of ICAP contributed 69 percent of its £295 million operating profit, up from the two previous years’ 66 percent and 59 percent. Noting that 25 percent of the firm’s 4,900 employees are “engaged in technology-related activities,” Spencer says a “global research and development capability,” with hubs in Israel, Sweden and the U.S., is producing such innovations as EBS Direct, designed to enhance liquidity and credit risk management in currency trading, and the CreditLink platform from ICAP’s Traiana unit, created to support trading under new derivatives market rules. ICAP’s dual-registered, U.K.-U.S. swaps execution facility is another of the “initiatives where ICAP has responded to regulatory change.”

The 2014 Tech 50