Michael Spencer is one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs. Educated at Worth Abbey and Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he read physics, Michael’s career in the City of London began in 1976, as an investment analyst at Simon and Coates. In 1980, he joined Drexel Burnham Lambert where he spent three years broking futures.
Between 1983 and 1986, Michael was a director at money broker Charles Fulton, until his involvement in the new interest rate swaps market led him to set up Intercapital in May 1986. As a specialist financial derivatives broking firm, Intercapital grew over 10 years from the original four people to over three hundred world-wide, with offices in London, New York and Sydney.
In October 1998, Intercapital merged with EXCO, a listed money broker. The following year it merged again, this time with Garban plc to form ICAP with Michael as Chief Executive. ICAP grew to become part of the FTSE 100 Index in 2006, creating more than 5,000 jobs.
In December 2016, ICAP completed a transaction to sell its global hybrid voice broking and associated information business to Tullett Prebon. This transaction involved the ICAP brand being transferred to Tullett Prebon and the remaining ICAP businesses forming a new company called NEX Group plc, with Michael becoming the Chief Executive of NEX.
NEX was launched in January 2017 as a technology-based services company committed to empowering the global financial markets by offering customers better ways to execute trades and manage risk.
In 2018, NEX announced it had reached an agreement with CME Group, the world’s largest financial exchanges group, for them to acquire the whole of NEX in a transaction that created a leading, client-centric, global markets company. The transaction completed in November 2018. Michael was appointed a director of CME Group and also works with them as a Special Adviser focused on integrating the two businesses.
