Michael Spencer

Michael Alan Spencer is a British businessman, born 30 May 1955 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His father was a civil servant working there until 1960, before being transferred to Sudan and then Ethiopia.

A stalwart of the City, he is the founder and chief executive of NEX Group plc, which is focused on electronic markets and post trade business. Spencer is one of the world’s leading interdealer brokers, as well as one of the top electronic brokers of fixed income and foreign exchange markets. He is largely based in London, travels widely, and maintains property in Kenya as well.

Spencer was sent to England at an early age, and studied physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford after attending Worth Abbey Benedictine School in Sussex. He says he always wanted a job in the City and the chance to make some money. Spencer began a successful career dealing in shares while still a student.

After a steep learning curve and initial setbacks, and working at Drexel Burnham, he bounced back, regalvanised, and founded Intercapital Private Group Limited in 1986. This became Intercapital plc after a reverse takeover by Exco plc, and three years later his company merged with Garban plc to create Garaban-Intercapital plc before it renamed itself as ICAP plc in 2001.

Under Spencer’s leadership, ICAP were early adopters of the electronic market. They acquired an American electronic broker called Brokerteck in 2003, and this was widely credited as pushing ICAP ahead of many of their competitors who were slower to see the opportunities provided by opening up trading using online tools and reporting.

By 2006, ICAP was valued at more than £3bn on the London Stock Exchange, and was credited with making millions for its shareholders, some of them making back their initial investment ten-fold within those first seven years. The company traded from 26 offices around the world

Spencer led the company through a series of acquisitions of trading platforms for foreign exchange, post-trade processing, client servicing, and trading partner integration solutions. This was done with the aim of providing services for financial institutions before launching the ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange in 2012. His goal was always to build what he called the global electronic superhighway to smooth transactions from New York, through Europe, and on to Asia. With each expansion into new markets along that virtual superhighway, profits grew and grew.

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