About Jeffrey Sprecher
During ICE's Q3 and Q4 2025 earnings calls, Sprecher reported record adjusted earnings per share of $6.95 for the fourth quarter, a 14% year-over-year increase. He stated that ICE had received SEC approval to launch a new clearing service for U.S. cash treasuries, nearly a year ahead of the January 2027 Treasury clearing mandate. Sprecher also discussed the company's approach to artificial intelligence, saying ICE is applying AI models to workflows across the company and that customers have shown positive uptake of AI tools built into ICE's mortgage network for data automation and customer engagement. He noted that ICE is exploring tokenization as a potential evolution of market infrastructure, and that the company plans to apply for SEC regulatory approval for NYSE tokenization under existing federal law.
In a March 2026 interview, Sprecher discussed his career and approach to business, describing how ICE took approximately $16 trillion in credit default swaps off bank balance sheets during the financial crisis. He also commented on the U.S. student loan system, stating that when the government began issuing loans directly, universities handled lending, which he said led to tuition inflation and that roughly 40% of outstanding student loans are in arrears. Sprecher noted that Treasury Secretary Bessent refers to him as "capitalist ICE" to distinguish his company from the other ICE.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Jeffrey Sprecher's recent appearances.
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Transcript (8 segments)
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Host0:02
Welcome back to Squawkbox this morning. New this morning, the Intercontinental Exchange and Poly Market announcing a huge new deal. It's a strategic partnership. The financial services giant investing $2 billion in Poly Market. It's old money meets new money. Joining us right now exclusive interview is Poly Market founder and CEO Shane Coughlin, and ICE founder and CEO Jeff Sprecher. Great to see both of you this morning. It's a fascinating deal and really as I said it's sort of old money, new money, it's all coming together here. Why don't we go back in time just for a second and maybe Jeffrey you can explain how you thought about or how this whole thing came about.
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Jeffrey Sprecher0:43
That's an interesting topic. Shane was falsely accused of wrongdoing and was raided by the FBI. A mutual friend of the three of us, Tom Farley, called me up and said, 'You should reach out to Shane. He's a great guy. He's building something revolutionary and I think he could use your help because a few years earlier I was falsely accused of something and was raided by the FBI.' I thought about it and said, I don't really know this guy. I don't really want to get involved. But that weighed on me and ultimately when Shane was exonerated, I picked up the phone and said, 'I have something in common with you and I'd love to sit down and talk about whether we could compare notes.' Much as your introduction said, just look at us. I'm old and bald. He's young and mop-headed. I have a closet full of ties. I don't think he owns a tie. The company we're sitting in was started in 1792. He's got the hottest financial services company in 2025. So we started to talk about the white space of opportunity that existed between our firms and this common experience that we both had and it brought us together.
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Host1:54
Shane, were you looking for a partnership? And also, how do you think about you are the young hot kid on the street right now. How do you feel about partnering with the old guy?
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Shane Coughlin2:05
Look, I'm just humbled to be here. When Jeff and I started talking about collaborations, despite maybe being from different eras, there was just a lot of cohesion. We're on the same page about all different types of things that we could build. I think what's exciting here is a lot of older juggernaut companies make announcements about different types of things they're going to do with cutting edge technology, but with what we're doing, there's going to be real bite. We're going to be able to actually build and ship some great stuff. Jeff, ICE is the largest exchange company. They have so many assets in traditional finance, so much infrastructure. And his willingness to go and say, 'Let's go and leverage this infrastructure to go and innovate and disrupt the existing legacy systems and go and try and figure out the new brave new world.' You just can't pass that up. You've got one life. The idea that we can have the old money and the new money or the largest existing player with the new kid on the block, it's just a match made in heaven and we're so excited.
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Host3:18
Guys, what does it look like in practice? Meaning in terms of you talked about distribution, talked about new products, things that you could ship. If we're having this conversation a year or two from now, what does this partnership look like to the public?
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Jeffrey Sprecher3:33
Let me take that. First of all, this company is probably the most distributed company in the world inside of the financial services industry and the existing banking system. What Shane is doing using blockchain and other technologies is DeFi and is basically disrupting all of that. But there's going to be a period of time when you have to do both. We need to bring along the industry into his disruption. Initially we're going to be distributing his data which I think even for you Andrew is becoming hot news. Some of these predictions are incredibly accurate including the last election cycle. That I think will be of interest to legacy finance. But he and his engineers have already been working with our team and I'm telling you they're out there, they understand where the puck is going, and we're following them to make sure that we don't get disintermediated.
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Host4:40
Shane, how soon is the US market going to be able to have access to what you're doing? Because obviously a lot of folks in the US are going to your website constantly to see the numbers, but they're not able to actually place the bet.
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Shane Coughlin4:56
Yeah, I think as people who've been paying attention have seen, we self-certified our first contracts recently and it's happening very soon. We're going to be rolling out the beta this month. A few people have been on it and so far the feedback's great. So we're really excited.
