Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSC an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years.
Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSC and at ICE's exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Since 2018, over 430 hour-long or so episodes, I've sat here in the library of the New York Stock Exchange talking to leaders, visionaries, and entrepreneurs about the ideas they've hatched, the companies they've built, and the jobs they've created, and the products they've provided, and the value they've realized for those investors ready, willing, and able to go along for the ride with them.
When we were developing the idea for this podcast, our thinking sort of started here at home. Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE as it's known, the point of origin of the Inside the ICE House name, was a story that very much fit that mold. A Thomas Edison-like light bulb popping up above the head of an entrepreneur named Jeff Sprecher, who turned the chassis of Continental Power Exchange, a company at the end of the last century sitting on proverbial cinder blocks, into a high-powered muscle car, now valued as of last check around $85 billion.
So it made sense to us at different junctures of our seven-year-long run to have Jeff on the show to tell his story and update us on big developments as they happened at ICE. We did our first show with Jeff in 2018 and our second in 2020, and that was before ICE made the plunge into mortgage technology with its acquisition later that year of Ellie Mae for $11 billion and its acquisition Black Knight just last year for $11.9 billion, both deals surpassing the 2013 takeover of the New York Stock Exchange for $10.9 billion, and its purchase of electronic data systems in 2015 for $5.2 billion. Those among so many other deals, seeing around corners that have helped put ICE ahead of the pack.
Along the way, we've talked weekly with CEOs and founders, prime ministers and legends of Wall Street. We've also taken time to talk with other leaders here at ICE, dozens of them, about the work they're doing to make exchanges and clearing ever faster, more efficient, more digital, and less expensive than their predecessor processes which ICE has over and over made obsolete.
And now as I prepare to move on and pass the torch, as it were, to the extraordinary team of storytellers we've assembled here at ICE, we thought it altogether fitting and proper that we should talk with Jeff one more time, less about the past, but about the future; what lies in store for my colleagues, the company, the financial services industry, the US economy, and the world as a whole as we sit here in 2024, nearly a quarter-century after Jeff founded ICE at an incredibly pivotal time.
In a minute, for the last time, our conversation with my friend Jeff Sprecher, founder, chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
As I get ready to sign off for the last time, who better to be the first three-time guest of the Inside the ICE House Podcast than the visionary who founded Intercontinental Exchange nearly a quarter-century ago, Jeff Sprecher. Wisconsin born and bred, the recipient of an engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and an MBA from Pepperdine, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, Jeff gave us the green light nearly seven years ago to launch this weekly podcast, which has now amassed an archive of over 430 episodes.
Along the way, Jeff has occasionally helped us book some of our most interesting guests and the team he assembled here at ICE, people like Ben Jackson, Lynn Martin, Chris Edmonds, Trabue Bland, Doug Foley, Scott Hill, Mayur Kapani, Brookly McLaughlin, Lord Hague, Sharon Bowen, Tom Farley, Michael Blomgren, John Tuttle, Gordon Bennett, Tim Bowler, and so many others have sat before these microphones, including Jeff, first on Episode 14 in 2018, and then Episode 175 in 2020.
Jeff, as ICE approaches its silver jubilee, welcome back one more time inside the ICE House.
Jeff Sprecher:
Well thank you, and I hope you and I will find a way to continue to communicate with one another as this great adventure that you're on goes forward.
Josh King:
It's so great to have you on one more time, because that first episode that we did really served as one of the launching pads for the show. The second one in the middle of COVID was sort of a check-in at a dire spot for the whole world. And here we are, I think as I look on my ticker, ICE nearing $150 a share, market cap where it is, it has been amazing seven year run for me.
As I was getting ready for this show, Jeff, as I often do, spend some time with Mr. Google. In the time since you founded ICE, seven or eight residents of 10 Downing Street, British Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and, as of a couple of weeks ago, Keir Starmer. As the success of ICE Futures Europe and our energy business depends so much on the navigation of the British financial services industry by leaders in London and Brussels, as you take stock of the men and women you've interacted with at number 10 and talk with advisors like Lord Hague about Labor's return to power, what does it mean for the Futures industry?
Jeff Sprecher:
Well, first of all, it's interesting to have you tick through that list because it just comes to mind that this job that I'm in has afforded me the opportunity to meet most of the people that you've named. I think it's because the kinds of markets that we serve, that we try to make transparent and accessible, are important to people that are in positions of power. Much of our core franchise is based around energy, and most industrialized countries are on a transition plan to have cleaner and more affordable energy for their societies. We provide a lot of tools to allow the market to address that opportunity and concern.
Josh King:
Here at home, then, that same exercise, since you launched ICE, six chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt, Harvey Pitt, Bill Donaldson, Chris Cox, Mary Schapiro, Mary Jo White, Jay Clayton, and Gary Gensler. Here is Chair Gensler at the NYSC on CNBC just a couple of weeks ago when you accompanied him on the floor.
Speaker 6:
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Gary Gensler:
Look, this is a really good thing if you sell your stock on a Monday, you will get your cash on a Tuesday. That's the easiest way to think about it. In the past, just a week or so ago, it took two days. If you sold your stock on a Monday, you got it Wednesday. So we worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission on a rule to shorten that settlement cycle because today's technology allows that. But here's the interesting thing, we're just back to where we were in the 1920s.
Josh King:
Jeff, Gensler's a unique bird; a democrat, so we know that ideologically you and he might have your differences. But he also knows the derivatives business and the digital assets business quite well, having served as the 11th chair of the CFTC during the great financial crisis from '09 to 2014. How productive have your various discussions with Gary been? And has there been an evolution in his thinking, do you think?
Jeff Sprecher:
He's our regulator, and so generally when he and I are talking, I give great deference to the fact that he's overseeing our activities. It's important that we have an open dialogue. One thing I will say about Chair Gensler is that he's always been willing to take one of my calls or have a meeting to hear whatever's on the mind of our company. I greatly appreciate that from him. We don't always agree, as you've suggested, but we can at least discuss it and debate it. And generally speaking, I understand when we disagree why we disagree, the areas that are of concern to the government. That's important in a business to understand the limitations so that we don't waste time and energy on things that we're not going to be able to accomplish with our governments.
I really am proud of the fact that, again, the list of names that you've ticked off have been on both sides of the aisle, and ICE really at its core runs regulated, transparent, standardized, easily accessible marketplaces. Government oversight is an important piece of providing the market, the broader consumer, with the confidence that we're operating in a neutral and efficient manner as a marketplace operator.
All of the names that you have ticked off are people that have been important to our success, and I'm very proud of the fact that we have good relationships with everybody on that list.
Josh King:
I mean, it was striking. After Gensler finished that interview on CNBC, you grabbed him and took him up to the sixth and seventh floor, showed him some of our most important exhibits and treasures here. The guy seemed to be really wide-eyed about being in the cradle of capitalism after being a regulator of it for so long.
Jeff Sprecher:
By the way, I go into the building all the time and I share that same joy. Occasionally I get to host the people that are ringing the opening or closing bell and stand on that podium and look down on the floor, and I'm always awestruck every time I do that. It's something that is hard to describe. For me particularly, as an entrepreneur and a business person, that building and the events of history that have happened on that site and how it has helped develop the capitalism that has driven the success of our country, is just something that it's hard to describe, but it's an amazing feeling.
And so as Chair Gensler and I stood next to each other and talked about the Buttonwood Agreement, which is the agreement which was the foundation of the New York Stock Exchange, which is on display in our building, it's an awe-inspiring place to be, and I think we both felt that as we stood together.
Josh King:
Jeff, I just got back from a family vacation to Scotland and Norway. The Brent oil and gas field, which lies on the Northeast coast of Scotland, midway between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast, has bestowed untold riches on those lands and has for so long been the basis of the Brent oil benchmark on which ICE has built a large part of its business. You've talked in recent quarters about the North Sea itself not turning out as much oil anymore, but the Brent marker itself living on in a powerful way through ICE. As you think back on ICE's 2001 acquisition of the International Petroleum Exchange and what you see today from Houston to Abu Dhabi, what's the future of the Brent complex and the way in which oil, gas oil, and their derivatives are both extracted and then delivered to market?
Jeff Sprecher:
It's a great question. I remember in late 2000 when I went to London and introduced myself to the management of the International Petroleum Exchange, then called the International Petroleum Exchange of London, I didn't know what Brent was. I'd never heard it. We have taken that business, which at the time had four products and today has over 1,000, and which had a flagship product called Brent, which was a grade of crude oil from the North Sea. Today we have every type of energy including emerging energies in the form of renewable energies of all ilk, in the form of government initiatives to try to change the way energy is formed and delivered. We've expanded that business tremendously.
And so the future, it's not so much the future of Brent, it's what is the evolution of energy use? As we become more automated as societies, as we become more digital today, we're talking a lot about AI and how AI could be the next leg up of society in terms of the ability to make informed and rapid decisions that can be pushed across an entire population, all of which has to be fueled in some manner that the current generation really wants to be done in an environmentally friendly and efficient way. That's the future of what we do. It's delivering those kinds of products around the world and allowing people to manage the risk of the change that is inevitable as those goals are pursued.
Josh King:
Speaking of those types of products and the change that's inevitable, since you last appeared on Inside the ICE House in May of 2020, the nation has navigated through the challenges of COVID, the last presidential election, the midterms. Now another election looms, but the pandemic is behind us. And as I mentioned, ICE hasn't been on the sidelines when it comes to making the big bets in mortgage technology. I checked our most recent ICE Mortgage Monitor from Andy Walden and his team. I want to hear a clip of his appearance on NYSE TV with Pete Ash.
Pete Ash:
So we were talking about rates, and as we know, rates have remained elevated for the past two years. How has that really reshaped expectation across the housing market?
Andy Walden:
It's really transitioned the landscape of what the mortgage market looks like and the mortgages and interest rates that folks hold across the US. There are 4.8 million fewer sub 4% mortgages than there were just a couple of years ago. There are 4 million more 6.5% plus mortgages than there were a couple of years ago. And that does a couple of different things. One, we've all talked about that lock-in effect, folks unwilling to list their home for sale because they have that low rate. That's gradually wearing off, and I emphasize gradually. It's going to be a slow process.
Josh King:
Four million loans at 6.5% or higher. Jeff, Goldman Sachs recently upgraded ICE, noting a trough in the mortgage space. Where do you see things going from here, and how do you think ICE is going to capitalize on it?
Jeff Sprecher:
The reason that we're investing in this area is that anyone that's ever bought a home will know that it is a very painful process. It's still today very analog, very paper-based. Most closings are still done with a wet signature in front of a notary public. The ability to refinance a mortgage is equally as painful as entering into the original mortgage. Even though the homeowner may be current on and had great performance on all of their payments, even though the value of the house may have increased, it's still a very, very cumbersome process.
We think that we can streamline that process, that you should be able to buy a house easily sitting on an app on your phone or sitting in your kitchen on a computer. And that as interest rates change, and to the extent they change to the consumer's advantage, you ought to be able to refinance your mortgage with a few mouse clicks and take advantage of a changing environment.
Similarly, we are gathering the data and information that we can provide to the homeowner to give them a better view on the value of their house, their own payment history, the current available mortgages in the marketplace, and allow people to very quickly view the options that they have in front of them and make an informed economic decision on what may be the most valuable asset that an average consumer will ever own.
Josh King:
Hearing you talk about this newer part of the business compared to where things all began in that 2000 trip to London to talk to the head of the International Petroleum Exchange, when you and I talked in 2020, we reflected on the two decades of ICE since its inception. I think the actual date is May 11, 2000. You're now on the cusp of this quarter-century momentous milestone. How do you feel about it? Did you ever think you'd be at it for so long? And how do you think you're planning to celebrate when next May comes around?
Jeff Sprecher:
When I started the company, I didn't have any expectation. I just thought it was an interesting thing to work on. I questioned why in the dawn of the internet that we still had trading floors that had people in funny jackets that were flashing hand signals at each other. Similarly, I don't really know anything about the mortgage business other than it's painful when I bought a house and got a mortgage. And it just seems like, again, in this era of digital innovation, that someone should be able to streamline that process. And so I haven't really sat and reflected on 25 years. It's my job, and I think it's incumbent on a chief executive of an organization, particularly an organization like ours, which is very dynamic and full of really talented people that want to be challenged. It's incumbent on me to continue to look forward and see if we can find opportunities where we can apply this great organization.
And so I have not spent a lot of time looking backward, but I appreciate you having me take a pause here just to think about that.
Josh King:
Talking about that organization, if I go back to the last time that we talked on this program, I'm going to quote you here. You said, "For years, what Chuck and I have been working on is our culture, trying to figure out exactly what made us so successful, and how do we enshrine that inside the company so that it's bigger than any one individual, including Chuck or I." So 24 years later, how is that never-ending project going? Does this endeavor of refining and perfecting the company culture persist to this day?
Jeff Sprecher:
It does. I have no idea why I've become personally successful other than the fact that I just worked hard and tried to do the right thing and keep a sense of ethics and helping others. And my original partner, Chuck, who you mentioned, had that same view. We just said, "We're not managers and we don't really know how to run a business, but we should make sure we attract the kind of people to our venture that share that vision, that are passionate and enjoy work, and like helping others." And it seems like if you do that, everything else just kind of takes care of itself.
We, for most of our lives, never had a research and development department. But what we did have are a lot of people that were talking to customers and asking them about their problems, or asking them what was wrong with our products, what we could do better, and bubbling that information up to people that could act on it so that we were constantly evolving the business. That's a culture that I guess the tone starts at the top with me to a certain degree, but it's the only tone I know because it's the way the business started.
Josh King:
In the last seven years that I've been here, many new things and initiatives have come to the fore; not only the move into mortgage technologies that we've been discussing, also sort of the move throughout different global capitals and providing energy throughout the rest of the world. In 2021, ICE launched ICE Futures Abu Dhabi and the world's first Murban Crude Futures contract. I want to listen to a clip from His Excellency Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the UAE and also head of ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, discussing the significance of this contract back when it had its launch day.
Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber:
Our new exchange, IFAD, will make ADGM even more global, and we will establish Abu Dhabi as a world-class commodities trading hub. That is simply the case because starting today, Murban Futures will be freely traded from Singapore to London and from Abu Dhabi to New York. In fact, whenever there is a trading screen, Abu Dhabi Murban will be on that screen. This new contract represents a great value proposition and a win-win for everyone involved.
Josh King:
A win-win for everyone involved. Jeff, that was three years ago. Recently ICE announced record trading activity in Murban Crude for the first quarter of 2024. To what do you attribute the success of IFAD and Murban and do you foresee continued momentum leading to even more opportunities?
Jeff Sprecher:
What's interesting, Josh, is in year 2000 when we launched Intercontinental Exchange, a very senior trader that worked for a Wall Street bank said to me, "If you could ever figure out how to convince the Abu Dhabi Oil Company to allow the trading of a greater crude called Murban, it would be a home run." Now, I had never been to the Middle East. I couldn't have pointed to Abu Dhabi on a map. Certainly never heard of any greater crude oil, let alone Murban. But I filed that away, and years later when we had an opportunity to travel to the Middle East and meet the leadership of Abu Dhabi and the leadership of ADNOC Oil Company, time had passed to the point that they said, "Maybe we should allow more transparency in the pricing of Middle East crude." And we had gained enough success that they thought, "Maybe we partner with these Americans from Atlanta, Georgia and figure out a way to show this greater crude oil to the world."
It's been a really amazing partnership. The people that we've met and that we work with are people we really admire and like. I'm proud of that particular initiative, just because it's opened a whole new avenue, if you will, for our company to do business in a region of the world that none of us ever thought we would even visit, let alone do business in.
Josh King:
From Abu Dhabi to New York City, where you have visited many times and have done a lot of business in. Just a couple of weeks ago in June, you joined us here in Manhattan at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Goldman Sachs' IPO. When we got to the pre-bell festivities as we often do, president of the New York Stock Exchange, Lynn Martin, spoke about ICE's partnership with Goldman. I just wanted to take a listen to that.
Lynn Martin:
Two Goldman alums, Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn, constructed a partnership with Jeff Sprecher to form a company called ICE. And, as true partners, Goldman led ICE through a variety of acquisitions, including the acquisition of this iconic institution back in 2012. Had ICE not acquired the NYSE, the amount of technology, innovation, and investment would not have been possible and allowed us to become a nearly $80 billion market cap.
Josh King:
So Goldman and ICE have been really inextricably linked since our founding, Jeff. One of the first people I met who sang the praises of ICE when I was looking at coming here was Goldman's guy in Atlanta, Dave Dase. You've told great stories about sleeping on your sister's sofa coming to New York to pitch Goldman on moving their business to us. But reflect on what Lynn was talking about, rebuilding the technology stack of the NYSE. What level of wizardry did that represent for you, Mayur Kapani, and so many other people who are involved in that?
Jeff Sprecher:
Sure. Well, first of all, let me mention that Chuck Vice and I were building the company and I was financing it out of my checkbook. The two of us together called on 107 different firms over a two and a half year period trying to convince people that this technology that we were building was up to speed and would revolutionize the way people did business. The 108th client that I went and visited was Goldman Sachs. They were the first client to say, "Hey, this could be something. We really want to get involved." And they then opened the door for us to literally walk across the street and meet Morgan Stanley, who similarly said, "Maybe the two major Wall Street banks could help back you and bring along the rest of the industry."
And so I owe both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley a great debt of gratitude. And to a certain degree, the reason that I talk glowingly about them is I know 107 other firms that were interested but didn't act. In business, people that stick their neck out, that take a risk, that want to learn more are people that I admire.
On your second part of your question, when we bought the New York Stock Exchange, it was a mess. I mean, the only reason that a startup company can buy one of the oldest companies in the United States and one of the most heralded marketplaces in the world is because it was a mess. We hoped we could go in there and rearrange the deck chairs and figure out how to make it work better. But in reality, after spending a lot of time with it, we said, "We've got to burn it down and build it brand new from the ground up."
And again, we didn't necessarily know how to do that, and so we went out and found a small firm with some really talented engineers that were talking about doing something similar, and we acquired that small firm. We basically went to them and said, "Hey, how would you like to build the New York Stock Exchange from scratch?" And they said, "That sounds like an interesting project, and we'd love to join you." So we actually did an acquisition solely to get a pool of really great people, and then we unleashed them to rebuild the Stock Exchange.
It's been an interesting project because it's a bit like building a bridge while the cars are driving across. We couldn't shut down the New York Stock Exchange, so we had to build a new system in parallel and create various on and off ramps with the old technology and move to the new technology. And similarly, the New York Stock Exchange is connected to literally every significant financial services company and broker and clearing firm and trading firm in the world. We couldn't ask the people that were on the network to rebuild their connectivity, so we had to come up with a plan where we would do all of that in the background seamlessly for them so that nobody missed a beat. It took us number of years to actually effectuate that plan, but we did it. We had a couple small hiccups along the way, but given the size of the mission, we're really, really proud.
Today, that platform does about up to 600 billion transactions a day. It's one of the most highly utilized, highly efficient, and highly regulated pieces of technology that exist in the world.
Josh King:
Jeff, talking about building things from scratch and the years that go into that kind of development in, for example, the area of natural gas. Analyst Ken Worthington of JP Morgan asked ICE's president Ben Jackson in the recent earning call about TTF and the flow of that global commodity. I want to hear just a part of Ben's answer to Ken's question.
Ben Jackson:
In terms of natural gas, we believe that TTF has a long, long runway to go. What really fundamentally changed is that natural gas has been liberalized. It's no longer wedded to just pipeline flows, and it can now move freely around the world in the form of LNG. There's been massive investments in LNG terminals and regasification terminals around the world that have really changed and evolved gas into a global commodity.
Josh King:
The Dutch TTF Natural Gas hub, Jeff, called the Henry Hub of Europe now, how have you seen that evolve over 24 years? What does that mean for ICE in particular, and also the way homes are heated and industry moves in Europe and around the world in general?
Jeff Sprecher:
When we acquired the International Petroleum Exchange of London, the focus that company had was on UK Natural Gas. They had launched a very small kind of fledgling contract to buy UK Natural Gas. As Americans, we asked the logical question, which is, "Where does natural gas come from in the United Kingdom?" It turns out that there's a pipe that goes under the English Channel to continental Europe, and occasionally the needs are greater than the size of the pipe. And so we just started to think, "Well, what's on the other end of that pipe?"
As a result of that, we went and met a natural gas utility company that was Dutch. They had this natural gas field that we said, "Well, maybe we can make this into a marker, a benchmark contract, because it's a gas field on the other end of the British pipe." And they thought, "Well, that's kind of a curious thing." We convinced them, "Look, if you become a benchmark, you'll be able to run your business better. You'll be able to hedge your own output. You'll be able to have lots of third parties over time that may try to connect to your gas fields and your pipeline systems."
And sure enough, that contract, given our distribution, took off. That was before anyone ever thought of Brexit, where the politics on both ends of that pipe are now different, and where the needs of the European economy have fundamentally changed as that continent has decided to phase out coal-fired energy and push themselves much more towards renewable and gas-fired energy as a transition. That contract has really grown. It is now a marker that is being used around the world as the price of natural gas, particularly given that much of the natural gas now that's coming into fuel this transition in Europe is liquefied natural gas on a ship. And so TTF is increasingly being looked at as a global natural gas marker because it represents gas at sea.
Josh King:
Talking about things that are at sea, you've described ICE as an all-weather company, thriving through its exchanges, fixed income, data services, and mortgage technology segments. When inflation and mortgage rates spike, that has one effect on one part of our business. But when geopolitical tensions flare, that has an opposite effect on another part of our business.
When we worked on your 2023 letter to shareholders, you wrote, "No other sector has felt the impact of the Fed's higher for longer stance on interest rates more acutely than the US housing market." And my old friend, Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, now President Biden's ambassador to Japan, is famous for that saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." How is Ben Jackson, Tim Bowler, Mayur, and the IMT team using this time to integrate the former Ellie Mae and Black Knight businesses and prepare it for when rates begin to turn making it spring-loaded for growth, as you wrote in that letter?
Jeff Sprecher:
I understand Rahm Emanuel being in government and affecting change in periods of stress. I also think in a related way, it's easier to start a new initiative and have market acceptance of your initiative during periods of stress. It's a little bit counterintuitive in that we just have come through a zero interest rate environment where lots of entrepreneurs were able to start businesses and have easy access to capital in that zero interest rate environment. This period that we're in right now of a higher interest rate environment relative to the past few years has caused people that are in the consumer finance business and the mortgage business to reevaluate the way they go to market. And many, many major companies have been very receptive to what we're building in terms of a digital mortgage underwriting and acquisition and sales platform, because they literally are taking stock of the current market and preparing themselves for what the market is anticipating as a lower interest rate environment sometime in the near future.
Josh King:
When we were at ICE Experience in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, I sat down with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers at the Wynn to record an episode of this show and asked him about the rate environment and the issues in the housing market. I want to hear just a part of what Larry had to tell me.
According to some estimates, America is short around 3.2 million homes, which is about 2.5% of the existing US inventory. Why are we so short on housing, and what do we have to do for the American homeowner looking to buy a new home?
Larry Summers:
We're short on housing in part because of regulation and zoning and limits on the ways in which people can build up within our cities. We're short on housing because too often it takes too long to complete all the necessary permitting. We're short on housing because sometimes we're short on construction labor because of policies that are overly restrictive in one way or another, including on immigration. We're short on housing because we've been surprised by the increased housing demand that is coming from the post-COVID world where many people want bigger houses. Many people simply want different houses, because their lives have changed given what's happened with COVID. And we're short on housing because people are locked in because people who might otherwise have sold their houses don't want to sell their 2% mortgage that is giving them a source of very cheap money.
Josh King:
Building on what Secretary Summers said, Jeff, what ideas might you offer the Secretary of Housing in the next administration to help more Americans realize the dream of homeownership?
Jeff Sprecher:
First of all, going back to my earlier comment that you don't really need an R&D department, Secretary Summers just ticked off a half a dozen different problems, any one of which an entrepreneur could build a business around because these are very, very large markets. Even a small piece of the US housing market is a very large market for an entrepreneur.
I take stock in the fact that there's a millennial population in the United States. If you just plot the number of people in that particular cohort and look at it against all other birth years, birth periods, you see this big bubble that's bigger than the World War II generation, that's bigger than the baby boom generation. This is a big group of people in our country, and it was the group that years ago we said, "Well, they're never going to own a car; they're only going to take rideshare. They're never going to own a home; they're going to live in their parents' basements. They only want to have experiences; they're never going to own any assets." And that particular group is now in their prime earning years. They're forming families. And turns out they don't really want to live in their parents' basements.
We take stock, and partly why we're investing and innovating in this area is that we believe that that group of people is going to unlock a boom in homeownership. And as Secretary Summers mentioned, the market needs to catch up in terms of producing the housing stock for that group at prices that are affordable for that group.
I believe in markets. We run markets; we run the biggest capital markets in the world. And I know that those kinds of markets' signals that the secretary was talking about are prompting all sort of innovations that are going to take advantage of the opportunity that those problems have created.
I do think with respect to what we're building and having a more automated and digital underwriting and financing and capital markets infrastructure, once you digitize something and capture the data, it can really give policy makers a much better view into what's going on, and allow more tactical kinds of policies that ultimately, if they're tactical and narrow and aimed at a cohort backed up by data, government can react relatively quickly. And so I think that we will provide policy makers over time with better tools to try to help the American homeowner.
Josh King:
Better tools to help the American homeowner, just one of the things ICE is doing in 2024, 24 years after it was founded in 2000.
After the break, Jeff Sprecher, founder, chairman, CEO of ICE, continues his conversation with me about the company's all weather businesses, as well as the emergence of AI and its impacts moving forward. All that and more is coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Welcome back. If you are enjoying this conversation and want to hear more from guests like Jeff Sprecher, the founder, chairman, and CEO of ICE, please remember to subscribe to the Inside the ICE House Podcast wherever you listen to your pods. Please also give us a five-star rating and a review. It helps people know where to find us.
Before the break, Jeff and I were talking about some of the big moves that ICE has made since his last appearance inside the ICE House back in 2020, as well as issues around the world that affect our company and also our customers.
Jeff, a big part of ICE's reputation for problem solving was born in 2009 out of the great financial crisis when we stepped in with the first clearinghouses for credit default swaps. ICE Trust became ICE Clear Credit and ICE Clear Europe. Now comes news that ICE Fixed Income and Data Services under its new leader, Chris Edmonds, is aiming to clear US Treasuries in the $27 trillion Treasury market, given the SEC's new rule that Treasury trades and repo agreements needed to be centrally cleared. I want to hear a little bit of Chris talking to NYSC TV's Trinity Chavez a couple of weeks ago about the plan.
Chris Edmonds:
We felt it was a unique opportunity for us to evaluate the space we have. And as someone said to me the other day, maybe a worst kept secret. Because we've talked to a lot of folks in the space, see what this idea of competition in that space would be. And what we announced on Monday was an opportunity to let the world know that we would in fact enter the space using our Registered Securities Clearing Agency and see if we can't earn some of that client business. And there's a lot of it out there to go service.
Josh King:
Bring us inside the room where it happened back in 2008, 2009, when the world stood on the brink, and how you are bringing those lessons forward in this new plan that Chris outlined, and why it's so important for the efficient operation of markets.
Jeff Sprecher:
Sure. Shortly before a year or so before the financial crisis, I was flying to Europe. I was in business class on Delta Airlines, and Delta would come through the business class aisle with a little push cart that had newspapers on it. And I grabbed the Financial Times, which is The Wall Street Journal basically of the UK, maybe more broadly Europe. I read this article in there about credit default swaps, and I'd never heard of a credit default swap. Nobody had ever. I don't know what it was. I read this article, and the article basically said that the credit default swap market was having a lot of failures to deliver.
I literally tore that article out and stuck it in the back of my briefcase. And when I got back to my office in the States, I started Googling credit default swap, and I started asking people if they'd ever heard of these things or knew anything about them, and the fact that there were failures to deliver them. Was there something that we could do or build or some mechanism that we could create that would alleviate that? Again, the newspaper being our research and development department.
We went and we ultimately met a company that was a broker that was specialized in these products, and we went to them and said, "Could we build a clearinghouse where we would create a settlement mechanism?" They thought it was a good idea. We worked with them, and we ultimately acquired the company and acquired those people and unleashed them to build this clearinghouse.
And then lo and behold, the financial crisis happened. And again, you started to read articles that said, "We need to get the toxic assets off the books of the banks. Maybe we should be creating good banks and bad banks." And the whole, there were concerns that all of Wall Street was going to lock up the financial system and it was going to make its way through the ecosystem to everyday consumers.
And so I went to Tim Geithner who at that time was the head of the New York Fed. I said to him, "We have an idea that we could build a clearinghouse, and maybe you could tell the banks that you regulate that they should put their inventory into this clearinghouse and we would manage it." And I'll never forget this. He said to me, "Jeff, I'm government. I can't tell these regulated people what to do. But I can tell you that if you build a big barn and you open those barn doors, I will make sure the horses run right in front of you." And I said, "Understood. I'm going to go build a big barn." And we did. And again, we turned to a lot of relationships that we had gained over the years with major financial institutions and said, "We have a big barn, and the government's going to run the horses right by us. Why don't we figure out a way to all work together?"
In that context, the current Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted some new rules for the Treasury and Treasury repurchase agreement market.
Josh King:
An even bigger barn.
Jeff Sprecher:
An even bigger barn. Probably like you, I don't exactly know what a Treasury repo is, but there's a lot of them out there. And so we have started working again with the industry to say, "Why don't we grow the size of the barn we built and include other products including Treasury and Treasury repo? Is there a way that we could all work together to move this market since the government, again, is running the horses by the barn?"
So we'll see. It's a complicated project. It's a work in progress for us. But it's something that we've sunk our teeth into, we're excited about, trying to figure out what the plumbing is on Wall Street for these kinds of instruments and who all would be involved and where we can lend a hand. And so hopefully over the next few months, we'll come up with some really interesting innovative technologies that will allow this to happen.
Josh King:
In one of our recent episodes, I talked to Tom Siebel, who's the founder, chair, and CEO of C3 AI about the role that AI is playing in national defense and other industries. Here's part of what Tom told me about.
Tom Siebel:
Now after the announcement of ChatGPT in November of 2022, all of a sudden the AI winter is over, the AI winter which goes back to 1950 when all these technologies were invented. And really nothing happened for almost 75 years until we finally saw the Elastic Cloud become preeminent, big data, internet of things. And these enable us to deliver today 90 turnkey enterprise AI applications. And so it's not AI winter anymore.
Josh King:
Not the AI winter anymore, Jeff, but we may be entering the ICE age for AI. Here at ICE, one of your recent quarterly calls, you rolled out what you've referred to as the AI Center of Excellence here at ICE. What are some of the core objectives of the group and its goals?
Jeff Sprecher:
Wee decided that this is such an interesting area and it can bridge so many different behaviors and opportunities that we have inside the company that we should really create an R&D department for the first time and put some very significant domain knowledge there so that individual managers and employees that have ideas inside the company on how we might use some of these AI tools would have a place to go to centralize the knowledge base. We have, like many large companies, dozens and dozens of parallel initiatives going on inside the firm. Some are to help us do what we do already and do it better and more efficiently, and some are to look at the customer base we have and the data that we hold on their behalf and try to figure out how we can help them do things more efficiently, so it's two sides of the coin.
But we've already adopted AI here in our call centers. If a customer reaches out and communicates with us, we have a much better understanding of who they are and what problems they may be having. And as we solve problems for customers, those are being catalogued in ways that the AI models will easily replicate for other customers and help our people solve their problems.
We've talked a lot about our mortgage initiatives. Mortgage is a lot of documents and forms. And the language, if you will, of mortgage is something that's pretty regulated and standardized. It's different in all 50 states and in many cases it's different county by county in terms of what the forms are and what the disclosures are and what the requirements are, but if you take it all together, it's a language. And unlike some of the problems that automating the internet have where people are having to deal with race, what is the race of George Washington? And if you ask the AI model to draw a photo of a teacher, that teacher's going to look different in parts of the US than it would in India than it would in Afghanistan. And so those are complicated learnings for a model to have. But what we're doing in mortgages relatively benign. It's got guardrails and a lane right down the middle. And so our models are learning the language of mortgage. They're going to allow consumers and loan officers and realtors to be very, very efficient.
We're also doing a lot of work with big data that we have. I mentioned that we do 600 billion transactions a day on the New York Stock Exchange. It's a requirement that we keep those in our database for seven years for regulatory purposes. So we have a lot of data that allows us to do pattern recognition, if you will, for compliance purposes. It allows that data to be sorted and decisions to come out of that data much more efficiently than a human could ever do.
These are exciting technologies for us, and we have the type of people here that like to try new things. It's part of the culture we talked about. So there's a lot of exciting initiatives going on under the covers of this company.
Josh King:
Yeah, I mean, talking about trying new things and the exciting initiatives under the covers of the company about learning new languages and talking about how ideas flourish here and evolve from AI to mortgage technology to Treasury clearing. One unique aspect of ICE that sometimes is overlooked by outsiders is its governance. I look at the ICE board of directors today, and it's comprised of four men and six women, including Sharon Bowen, Caroline Silver, Shantella Cooper, Duriya Farooqui, Judith Sprieser, Marti Tirinnanzi. Here's a clip I want to share of Sharon in her Inside the ICE House conversation with us.
Sharon Bowen:
I saw what happened when our markets don't work, and that happened to be the period of time when we had some of the biggest bankruptcies of broker-dealers like Lehman Brothers and Madoff. So when I was approached a second time by the Obama administration to consider to be the CFTC chair, a fellow commissioner of the CFTC, I knew that was an opportunity to not only just give back and to be a public servant, but also to try to do whatever I could to make sure that we hopefully would never have another crisis like that again. But more importantly, as I said at my hearing at the time, I wanted to be that person who was the voice of those who had never had a seat at the table, many of whom had lost their jobs, their retirement accounts. And so I took that position as a commissioner sort of through that lens.
Josh King:
Jeff, echoing what Sharon said, you've given six women a seat at your table. How has that impacted ICE's culture and its current and perhaps future trajectory?
Jeff Sprecher:
The fact that they're women is not really why they're part of the company. Similarly, Lynn Martin, who is running the New York Stock Exchange, is highly qualified to sit in that chair. Just my own style is I like having a lot of different viewpoints come to a decision making process.
You mentioned that I have an MBA from Pepperdine. I've always read a lot, and I was a student of business because I loved business and wanted to be in business and read periodicals about business. And so when I got my MBA, there was really nothing that I learned in college that I didn't already know except for one class, which was organizational behavior. I had a professor there that taught us that really good companies, companies that really make a difference, have a lot of internal conflict, and then they have really good conflict resolution. I took that to heart as a young entrepreneur. I like having diversity, but it's not diversity of skin color or religion or sex or anything else that is a box ticking. I like diversity of thought and opinions. Now, it may well be that the differences between us in skin color and sexuality and religion lead to a foundation that allows you to think differently than the person sitting next to you, but it's not obvious to me. And it just so happens that we've recruited some really talented people to help guide this company.
As an anecdote, when we bought the New York Stock Exchange, I led the acquisition, negotiated the deal, and I gave myself the title of Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. And yet, I've never traded, I've never worked at a bank, I never worked on Wall Street. And in the history of that company, which was started in 1792, there's no ifs, ands, or buts that I was the least qualified person to ever have that title in a 200+ year history. Sharon Bowen is a securities lawyer who also has been a regulator of Wall Street and is imminently qualified to take that title. I was happy to give it up and ask her to step into my shoes, rightfully put herself in the history, a long lineage of incredible people that can help chair and organize that business of which I'm not one.
Josh King:
Of the real challenges to ICE's culture came as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We all went home to our basement or bedroom offices for months, and it's frankly been a long road back to back to the office. ICE is now at four days a week for most of its employees. I'm now headed to a place, Citadel, where they actually rented out the whole of the Four Seasons Palm Beach to recreate their five day a week trading floor. What was lost when people couldn't collaborate in person, and what are the ways in which you and the management team and the board have been working to counteract that?
Jeff Sprecher:
I'm one of these old school managers that I just think that the interaction of people is the joy of business. The ability to understand one another, as I just mentioned, to share our differences and bring a variety of opinions together, and then settle on something that everybody agrees is the right resolution is joyful and it's rewarding. I tell my people here all the time that I work with who say, "Well, why can't we just do this from home?" That during COVID, I learned the difference between a cocktail party and a cocktail party over Zoom. Some of my closest friends, we got this idea that we would all get a bottle of wine and pour ourselves a glass of wine and get on Zoom and talk about what was going on in the world. And it was painful. I mean, not only were the world events painful, my closest friends all sitting around talking to one another was painful. We didn't step on each other's communications. We didn't evoke emotion that you evoke when a group of people are in a room, all of those kind of human behaviors that are subtle but that we're attuned to.
I know you well enough to know that if there's something really important to you, I can tell it in the inflection of your voice. I can tell it in the way you'll assert yourself in the conversation, or cut somebody off, or add color to somebody's point. And all of that is hard to do on a Zoom call or a video call where the mic mutes itself whenever the next person talks. It just doesn't feel natural. And again, the only way that I'm able to get through to people is to say, "Go host a cocktail party with your closest friends on that frigging video and tell me that it was a good time, because it won't be."
Anyway, I'm glad that the world is returning to normalcy. I'm glad that video collaboration has come to the forefront, where in certain instances it becomes very effective so that we don't have to travel and we can see each other and communicate with each other. But, it's not the end all for real innovation and entrepreneurship. That is what comes with really good people and random interactions and the ability to share ideas and trust one another to affect those ideas.
Josh King:
Talking about a good time and random interactions, Jeff, as we begin to wind down a bit here, I kind of think of myself as pretty well plugged in with what's happening in traditional and social media. That's why I'd had this job here. But it's been a rare experience to work for a CEO who seems to beat me to the pulse of every digital trend out there. For me, just trying to keep up with you has been a lot of fun. One thing you told me to do one day, given your fascination as an engineer, was to tune into the YouTube series of a young Brazilian couple reclaiming a junked aluminum sailboat. I'm talking, of course, about Duca and Roberta of Odd Life Crafting. Just take a listen to what their 250,000 subscribers hear on a weekly basis.
Roberta:
And after bringing a sailboat that was neglected for over 22 years back to life, we moved aboard. For the next two years, we explored the Brazilian coast and part of the Caribbean, where we got an offer that changed our lives once again. We sold our boat and we moved to France where we are building our new 43-foot aluminum exploration sailboat.
Duca:
While the boatyard is building the whole of our new sailboat, we are learning the craft by converting a camper van to get ready to build the interior and all the systems of the boat ourselves.
Josh King:
Duca and Roberta in France; finally, your admiration for adventures like them and Brett and Jade Evans of Expedition Evans offers a lot of lessons for a corporate communicator like me, which in turn has given us license to grow this podcast and other platforms like NYSE TV, and Floor Talk with Judy Shaw, and Taking Stock with Trinity Chavez. As I begin to move on and you give guidance to the team that stays behind, what's your thought on how companies can keep pushing the envelope in how they tell their own story versus having their story told for them by others?
Jeff Sprecher:
Well, sure. I'll tell you the story of how I met those couples that are on YouTube. The New York Stock Exchange has one of the greatest brands in the world, one of the most well-known brands around the world; but our company, ICE, is not well-known. And in fact, when I go to a cocktail party, if somebody asks me what I do for a living, I tend to say, "We run the New York Stock Exchange," because they nod their head and understand that. If I say, "I work for a company called ICE," then they don't know whether it's ice cubes or whether it's the immigration service or whatever.
So we decided at one point that we needed to do more advertising. We needed to get our name out there, if anything, for recruitment and employee retention and building goodwill around the business. We hired a ad agency, and they went away, and they came in and put me in a conference room and they said, "We have three sample television and media commercials that we want to show you." They showed me these three commercials, and it was a bunch of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was a bunch of corporate gobbledygook. And I said to them, "That's terrible." And they said, "Well, what do you mean? These look great to us." So I said, "Let me show you something," and it just popped in my mind.
I grabbed a laptop, and I put up on the screen Duca and Roberta who were rebuilding a sailboat in Brazil, who speak with Brazilian accents, so for many people are hard to understand. And in this instance, Duca was laying on his back inside a dark sailboat that was sitting on stilts on a pavement, and he was wiring up the lights in this boat. And Roberta was holding a flashlight to try to help him wire this boat up. I showed them about two minutes of that video, and afterwards I said to them, "What did you think?" And they said, "It was amazing. That was really interesting." And I said, "These are people from a completely different culture. All they're doing is wiring some stuff together inside an old boat that's not even on the water, and it was interesting." And I'm like, "If they can make that interesting, you certainly can take this company that we have and find some stuff that we're doing that would be much more interesting than these three ridiculous corporate commercials that you came up with."
And so anyway, they, to a big degree, were inspiration for us to take something mundane and take something that is really derivative to what we were trying to do, but yet captured your attention. One of the great things about the internet is the number of creators that are out there that are doing amazingly innovative things, that dancing in their living room or whatever. It's fascinating to see how we've unleashed creativity.
And so I enjoy that as a pastime. I enjoy finding people that are creative and trying to think about other ways we could work with them. Are there ideas that they have that could influence things that go inside our company? Just like I gave you a number of examples of having your ears open when Larry Summers talks, or reading the Financial Times, or listening to a trader in year 2000 saying, "You should go to the Middle East and look for a grade of crude called Murban," you never know where sources of inspiration come if you keep your ears open. Most people don't ring a bell when they're telling you a good idea; but if you enjoy something and hear about problems and hear about what people are doing, I find it's pretty easy to come up with the next good idea.
Josh King:
Talking about the next good idea and the internet and innovation, you and I have sometimes lamented the superficiality of traditional media both in the print and the broadcast form. I know better than anyone that you hate to do interviews given how things are often taken out of context. And your wife, Kelly, is no stranger to that too. We've tried to give a lot of airtime and a lot of different views on the 430 episodes of this show over the last seven years. Certainly people like Michael Hague and Tony Blair on and David Rubenstein and Ken Griffin come from opposite political polls, but they've enjoyed equal time on this platform.
Now on the 203 weekly episodes of the All-In Podcast, besties Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg aren't from the same political stripe, but while they sometimes argue a lot, they continue to inform, entertain, and educate from their platform.
Chamath Palihapitiya:
Hello, Mr. President.
President Donald Trump:
Any time. I love that house he has. I love David's house. What a house. That made the biggest impression, huh? That was great.
David Sacks:
Thank you, sir. I heard you have a pretty nice house too.
President Donald Trump:
We're in a nice house. We like houses.
David Sacks:
It's only worth $18 million, right?
President Donald Trump:
The judge said $18 million. People said, "Palm Beach has gone down a long way." Hello, everybody.
Josh King:
That's a snippet of the All-In podcast with President Trump. I'm sure they'd be willing to have Vice President Harris on the program. What's your sense, Jeff, of how some of these unconventional platforms are able to spur dialogue more broadly, and how have the Democrats seem to have lost the thread of technology and Silicon Valley where of course, one of your heroes, Steve Jobs, was once one of the great advocates and fundraisers for Democratic candidates?
Jeff Sprecher:
Well, first of all, I'm not sure that the Democrats have lost Silicon Valley, but I do think the technology that we're talking about has allowed political candidates and business people like you and I to be able to talk directly to people in our own voice.
I watched a video yesterday of political consultant and pollster Frank Luntz talking about the upcoming presidential election and how the two candidates were likely to fare as we move closer to November. He made an interesting point that I logged, which was people really want to see the genuine side of each other. We don't really want a manufactured image of a person. We do want to see people's flaws, and we can accept people's flaws. And one of the things that the internet has done, including all the good work you've done over the hundreds of people that you've interviewed, it's allowed unfettered access to see people's good sides and raw sides and uncensored sides, which is, I think, something that as humans we all crave.
Just one other anecdote, which is the All-In Podcast holds an annual All-In Summit. In order to go to the All-In Summit, you have to apply and they have to accept you. I did apply to go this year, and I was rejected. And my wife applied and she was accepted. So my wife is going.
Josh King:
Does she get a plus one?
Jeff Sprecher:
She does not. I recently had an opportunity to be with David Sacks, and I mentioned to him that I totally respect their filters because my wife is much more qualified and much more interesting as an audience member than I am.
Josh King:
Talking about your wife, it was seven years ago that I first sat down with her, Kelly Loeffler, then the head of IR Marketing Communications at ICE about coming on board. I'm always going to be grateful to her and you for giving me the privilege of being on board for part of your journey here. We know Kelly's story since, the founding CEO of Bakkt, the junior senator from Georgia, the chair of Greater Georgia, and now the founder of RallyRight & Red Sky Services. She's remained deeply involved in the public debate over the country's future. How are she and you hoping to see that future unfold? And what can we all do, do you think, as citizens to create a more perfect union?
Jeff Sprecher:
I, personally, and Kelly and I as a couple have benefited from the great things that this country offers. And a bit of luck, but the great things that this country offers in order to try to pursue your passion, and have access to people and capital and systems that don't exist anywhere else in the world. I've traveled most places in the world, and this country is very, very unique. And so what's important to me is that we protect that to allow the so-called American Dream which I'm a beneficiary of to be available to everybody. I'm a product of public schools and a typical upbringing and nothing special, but the world had opened its doors for me as I tried to do certain things. And so I want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity that I had.
That discussion I think is part of this election. I think, again, go to the All-In Podcast. Go to my YouTube friends that we've just mentioned. These are all people that are dialoguing with a broader community, discussing their views on opportunity and success, showing their failures in a way that are unfiltered. And I think I'm in a very positive mood in terms of what's available for this country right now, given the access that the voting public has to information that was never before available.
Josh King:
It's not lost on me that as we end up our conversation, Jeff, the 33rd Olympiad is about to get underway in Paris. It brings me back to the last Olympics I attended with President Clinton in Atlanta in 1996 when Muhammad Ali lit the cauldron over what would become known as Turner Field. Let's listen to some of that moment.
Speaker 29:
Do you recognize her? Janet Evans. But look who gets it next.
Speaker 30:
The greatest. Oh, my.
Speaker 29:
And the response he evokes is part affection, part excitement, but especially respect. What a moment. Muhammad Ali, of course, an Olympian, as young Cassius Clay Gold Medal Boxer 1960, the Games of Rome.
Josh King:
One year later in that same city, Jeff, you and Chuck Vice are plying away to try to light the cauldron of Continental Power Exchange that would become ICE. It's been a world of change in Atlanta since then, now led since 2022 by Mayor Andre Dickens. A couple months ago, you and Warwick Dunn Charities led 300 volunteers to help transform the historic West Side James P. Brawley Corridor of Atlanta through the West Side Futures Fund. Metro Atlanta and Georgia as a whole playing such an important part in the future of the Southeast part of the country, and really the future of the country as a whole. Given that Governor Brian Kemp is term limited, now in his second term, what do you see as the future for your city and its state?
Jeff Sprecher:
I'll tell you another story that is representative of the community here. Not too many years after we started the company, the head of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce called up and said, "I want to come in and see you." And I was like, "Oh boy. I don't even know what a Chamber of Commerce is." I was busy and we were trying to build this business. I had little interest in meeting this person, and he was relentless.
And so eventually I sat down with him and I said, "Look, we don't have a lot of money. I can't join the Chamber of Commerce. I don't really even know what it does, honestly." And he said to me, "Jeff, there's an Atlanta way. And the Atlanta way is, when you reach a certain level of success, we expect you to give back. And there's a lot of ways to give back. One way would be through the Chamber of Commerce. Some would be to volunteer. Some would be to finance other volunteers. And we have a myriad of ways here that you can participate; you just got to tell us which one. But the reality is, the Atlanta way is you need to participate." And I took that to heart.
What's amazing about this community, and I think it is indicative of the South, is that it's not about your pedigree. It's not about your education. It's not about your race, religion, or creed. It's a sense that if you have a certain level of success, that it's just expected that you're going to help others. And so I slowly got involved in some of the civic affairs in Atlanta and Georgia more widely, as did my wife, which ultimately led to my wife going into the US Senate.
And so again, this is a legacy that goes back hundreds of years, and it's one that I'm happy to continue to try to promulgate and keep alive for the next generation. Because as great as it is to build a business and have my own personal success, the reality is the thing that really allows happiness is to share it with your colleagues and employees and with volunteers and with those that are less fortunate. Those are the real rewards that come from your own personal growth. I think that legacy is alive and well in Atlanta.
Josh King:
As I was just beginning this job, of course, I researched content that was out there about ICE, learning more about its legacy in Atlanta, its acquisition of the New York Stock Exchange, all the deals that have been done since 2000. One of the most illuminating things I ever found, not necessarily earnings calls or balance sheets or annual reports, but it was a video that you did with Edwin Marcial, your founding head of IT who retired before I arrived. Here's a clip from that TechRides video, as you and Edwin are about to go on a joyride around the streets of Atlanta.
Jeff Sprecher:
I feel like when you have a failure, you shouldn't have a funeral, that you shouldn't get down on yourself. And we've had, as you know, more failures than we've had successes. And if you dwelled on every failure and bemoaned everything, you'd never get through life. So I feel like to have a balance, you really need to just a take a moment to say, "This was great. We did this. Now on to the next one."
Sometimes in life you got to kind of freeze the space. We did that all the time. We got to be the first ones out there with something. We'll get all kind of feedback about how terrible it is, we know that.
Josh King:
All kind of feedback, more failures than successes, Jeff. As I think about Edwin, Chuck Vice, Scott Hill, Tom Farley, Mark Wassersug, Jerry Perullo, John Tuttle, and so many others that have helped build ICE, and then look at what they learned and what they applied toward their future endeavors, what might be your sense of pride as you think about how you fertilized the technology and finance landscape with folks who have made ICE and the NYSE so successful over the years?
Jeff Sprecher:
My pride is in knowing those people that you mentioned, and dozens and dozens and dozens of others that we interface with inside the company and outside the company. Having a culture attracts people that believe in your culture, and the kind of culture that we've really worked hard to create has attracted some amazing people. Many of those people that you mentioned have gone on to do other things, and we're all still very, very close. It was like being in the military together or any other initiative where you had a common goal and everybody grabbed a shovel and started to dig in order to build the monument. And so I'm thrilled that so many of these great people found us and contributed and benefited my life and the life of my family just by being there for us. It's the real reward that has come with solving so many customer problems.
Josh King:
Grabbing a shovel and starting to dig to build a monument to solving customer problems. Jeff, it has been a great privilege and honor to just be a little stone inside that monument. Thank you so much.
Jeff Sprecher:
Well, thank you, and thank you for what you've built. You're leaving behind a monument. You're going on to tackle even a bigger hill, I think, and one that we're quite thrilled to have you go do because we love you and like the mission that you're going on. But you're leaving behind this amazing podcast with, I think, a great future because of the way you've set it up and promoted it. And so I just want to say thank you for everything you've done for the company, and more importantly, thank you for everything you've done for me personally.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Jeff Sprecher, founder, chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange. That's NYSE ticker symbol ICE. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, make sure please to leave a review. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast.
Our show is produced by Lance Glynn with production assistance, editing, and engineering from Ken Abel. Pete Ash is the Director of Programming and Production at ICE. And I'm Josh King, your host, signing off for the final time from the library of the New York Stock Exchange for the last six years and over 430 episodes. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.