Michael Spencer

British businessman (born 1955)

Michael Alan Spencer, Baron Spencer of Alresford (born 30 May 1955), sometimes known as "Spens", is a British billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of NEX Group, a UK based business focused on electronic markets and post trade business which was acquired by CME Group in November 2018. NEX Group was formerly known as ICAP, until the sale of its voice broking business to Tullett Prebon in December 2016. Spencer was described in 2018 as the richest self made person in the City of London and a "City grandee". According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2021, he is worth an estimated £1.2 billion. He was awarded a peerage in August 2020 in the Political Honours List.

Spencer was born in British Malaya. His father was an economist and international civil servant, his mother a linguist. During Spencer's early childhood, his family moved from his birth country to Sudan and then Ethiopia. Aged eight, he was sent to England to board, latterly at Worth School in Sussex. He read physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, after which he considered becoming an astrophysicist. Spencer is an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and an Honorary Doctor of Loughborough University.

In 1976, he joined city broker Simon and Coates. In 1981, he joined Drexel Burnham, rising to Vice President before being fired for trading errors. From 1983 to 1986 he was a Director at futures firm Charles Fulton; when that firm floated, Spencer used £50,000 from his proceeds to co found his first business, along with three colleagues.

Spencer co founded Intercapital Brokers in 1986. Intercapital was the first to launch a real time screen that displayed live prices. In 1999, the company merged with Garban to create Garban Intercapital, the largest inter dealer broker in the world, with more than 5,000 employees across 63 offices. Garban renamed itself ICAP in 2001 (its full name did not fit on trading screens, hence the abbreviation to ICAP). In February 2010, Spencer made £45m from the sale of ICAP shares weeks before the company issued a profit warning that resulted in a 16% fall in the firm's share price. In September 2013, ICAP was implicated in the global Libor interest rate scandal and fined $87m (£54m) by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Britain's Financial Conduct Authority. In March 2014, British prosecutors filed charges against three former ICAP employees for their role in the affair. They were among a global group of finance professionals to be investigated, including staff from Barclays, UBS, Citigroup and RP Martin. In January 2016 the three ICAP employees were unanimously acquitted in the UK; the US Department of Justice dropped charges against the trio in July 2016. Spencer was not implicated but issued a public apology on behalf of ICAP. In March 2018, NEX announced an approach by CME Group further to a proposed acquisition. CME Group offered £3.8bn in a cash and share deal, valuing Spencer's stake at approximately £668m. By the time the deal was completed in November 2018, Spencer's stake had grown to over £700m, half of which he received in cash, raising his net worth to over £1bn.

Spencer holds stakes in numerous public and private companies. He is Chairman, director and majority shareholder in IPGL, a private holding company making investments on behalf of Spencer and other family trusts. He is an early stage investor in Temple Grange Partners, a consultancy that finds compliance specialists for financial markets. He is a co owner of Exotix, a frontier markets investment banking boutique. He has led investment rounds in various fintech firms, including biometric authentication firm Veridium, file regeneration technology firm Glasswall Solutions and FX data analytics firm Tradefeedr. In 2018, he became Chairman and majority shareholder of investment firm FCFM. He is an investor in Viewforth Investment Partners, a London based hedge fund focusing on mid cap European securities. In 2021, Spencer became cornerstone investor in a $130m venture capital fund at Element Ventures, focusing on b2b financial enterprise technology. Spencer is the largest outside investor in Netwealth, a UK based wealth management business. He also holds stakes in payment platform Klarna, wealth manager AJ Bell and online investment advisor Nutmeg. Spencer is a former chairman of stockbroker Numis Securities. In 2019 he built up a 6% stake in the company. In 2017, Spencer invested £54m in Singapore Life, an online savings platform for Singaporean and Asian markets. In 2020 his investment was reported to have doubled in value, upon the sale of Aviva's majority stake in the platform. He believes in a long term role for cryptocurrencies. He opposes MiFID II and has campaigned against tax surcharges on UK bank profits. Spencer is an investor in Martin Gilbert's AssetCo.

Spencer owns a stake in Cluff Natural Resources, an energy resources investor. He also owns 7% of Pantheon Resources, an Aim listed oil company with extensive interests on the North Slope of Alaska. In 2011, Spencer was made Chairman of Bordeaux Index, the online wine trading exchange in which he is an investor. He also holds a stake in English wine maker Chapel Down. He is the owner of Sirai House, a commercial lodge in Kenya. He is reportedly an investor in British bookmaker The Tote. Spencer is also an investor in various start ups, including female health startup Elvie, human longevity firm Juvenescence and mobile gaming firm Probability. In 2020 Spencer led a funding round for Superdielectrics, a firm developing technology to build supercapacitor energy storage for electric vehicles.

Spencer served as Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 2006 to 2010, during which time the party's finances moved from a deficit of £8m into a surplus of £75m. In 2020, he became Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank and pressure group founded by Margaret Thatcher. He is also Chairman of the Conservative Party Foundation, a company established to strengthen the financial future of the Conservative Party. Spencer has been a donor to the Conservative Party. In 2012 it was reported that he maintained personal contact with the then Prime Minister David Cameron. ICAP and Spencer have made £4.6m in donations to the party although Spencer was critical of the May government's business policies; he has not donated to the party since the 2017 UK general election. Spencer was nominated for a peerage in Cameron's resignation honours list for charity fundraising and service to the Conservative Party while its treasurer, but reportedly, his nomination was blocked by the Cabinet Office. Spencer has been reported to favour positive discrimination employment policies for women but is against gender based employment quotas since he believes that they wrongly presuppose prejudice by all male employers. He has criticised the British government's pay gap review as a distraction from Brexit. Spencer was among the first to employ female brokers in the City. He made his maiden speech in November 2021, a year after he entered the Lords.

In 1993, Spencer founded the ICAP Charity Day, an annual event in which royalty and celebrities man the trading desks at ICAP and the broking firm donates the day's revenue to charities. As of February 2017, the event has raised over £140 million and backed 2,200 charitable projects. He has said that the Charity Day is his proudest achievement in business, alongside breaking into the FTSE100 with ICAP. Various public individuals have manned the phones for Charity Day, including Prince William and Kate Middleton, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Mo Farah, Chris Hoy, George W. Bush, Samantha Cameron, Cheryl Cole, Tom Hardy, Halle Berry, Daniel Craig, and Chris Hemsworth. The Spencer Family Foundation has backed a number of philanthropic initiatives, including a £1 million donation toward the British Normandy Memorial, dedicated to soldiers who died under British command during the Normandy landings. The Foundation also donated £100,000 to the Remember Me Covid memorial at St Paul's and a six figure sum to the Mail Force campaign for PPE for hospitals, care homes and charities.

In 2008, Spencer divorced his first wife Lorraine. They had two sons and a daughter, and homes in Notting Hill, Suffolk and Manhattan. Who's Who lists his hobbies as running, riding, shooting, wine and art; he is also reported to be an aviation enthusiast. Spencer runs a horse breeding programme and plans to build a stable in Laikipia. His horse Freewheeler, a South African bred colt, won the 2018 Kenya Derby at Ngong. He is a Christian and churchgoer.