Sprecher's first job was at Trane, where he met William Prentice, who was developing power plants following deregulation. Prentice offered him a job at Western Power Group in 1983. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 passed and deregulation in the electric industry started. Those working in the "electric industry realized the need for real-time, continentwide transactions", made possible by "Continental Power Exchange" technologies whereby "individual businesses and consumers may one day be able to select an energy provider in the same way that individuals shop for long-distance telephone service." In 1996 he bought the Continental Power Exchange in Atlanta, Georgia from MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company for $1 plus the assumption of debt, which became the foundation for Intercontinental Exchange. In the 1990s energy trading was handled manually by "Continental Power Exchange, an electronic energy trading company. By 1997 Continental Power Exchange CPEX had "a federated software structure in place, CPEX... ready to expand to more servers as growth demands. CPEX's hardware and server architecture capable of supporting foreseeable changes that may be necessary when the client load arrives. Continental to stay at least one step ahead of the marketplace." Sprecher started Intercontinental Exchange in 2000 as an online marketplace for energy trading in Atlanta. Shortly after the company approached Enron to be a client, Enron started its own competing electricity trading platform, which dominated the market. Enron's market model was to buy from every seller and sell to every buyer. Wall Street bankers, particularly Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, backed him and he launched ICE in 2000. When Enron's exchange collapsed in 2001 in the Enron scandal, ICE's business exploded. Since then the company has expanded including the following acquisitions:
On March 19, 2020, the public release of federal financial-disclosure documents revealed that Sprecher and his wife, interim U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, sold millions of dollars of stock the couple owned in companies vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sales began the same day Loeffler and other senators received a private briefing from federal officials about the looming crisis. The documents also showed that the couple purchased stock in a company that would potentially benefit from the shelter-in-place orders that have since been implemented throughout the United States to prevent the spread of the virus. The company, Citrix, specializes in teleworking software. At least some of the stocks that Loeffler sold were owned jointly with Sprecher and would have required his knowledge and authorization to sell, documents show. On March 20, 2020, the consumer advocacy group Common Cause filed complaints against Sprecher and Loeffler with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Senate Ethics Committee, and the United States Justice Department, requesting from the latter a criminal investigation of the couple for violations of the STOCK Act.
Personal life
Sprecher has been married to U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler since 2004. They reside in Tuxedo Park, Atlanta in a $10,500,000, 15,000 square foot estate called Descante.
