The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is a U.S.-based company that runs various financial and commodity markets and exchanges. It kicked off in May 2000 in Atlanta, Georgia. ICE’s operations cover futures exchanges, cash exchanges, central clearing houses, and services for off-exchange trading.
ICE has futures exchanges in several locations, including the U.S., U.K., EU, Canada, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. Its cash exchanges feature the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), along with NYSE ARCA, NYSE National, NYSE AMEX Options, NYSE ARCA Options, and NYSE Chicago. Additionally, ICE manages six central clearing houses: ICE Clear Europe, ICE Clear U.S., ICE Clear Credit, ICE Clear Netherlands, ICE Clear Singapore, and ICE NGX.
ICE went public on November 16, 2005, and joined the Russell 1000 Index on June 30, 2006.
Understanding about Intercontinental Exchange
In May 2000, Jeffrey C. Sprecher, a developer in the power plant sector, launched ICE with the aim of creating a more transparent and efficient platform for trading energy commodities over-the-counter (OTC).
This new platform outperformed manual trading by offering better price transparency, increased efficiency, more liquidity, and reduced costs.
Initially, ICE focused on energy products like crude oil, refined oil, natural gas, power, and emissions.
Over time, through various acquisitions, the company expanded its offerings to include other commodities such as sugar, cotton, and coffee, along with foreign cash exchanges and equity index futures.
In light of the 2007–08 Financial Crisis, Sprecher established ICE Clear Credit to act as a clearing house for credit default swaps and OTC derivatives, providing essential risk management services. By March 2009, ICE Clear Credit was up and running, receiving approval from the Federal Reserve as a bank, and two years later, it was recognized as a clearing house regulated by the CFTC and SEC.
ICE was the pioneer in offering clearing services for OTC energy and credit derivatives.
According to ICE’s Q1 2022 report, they had cleared over $16.4 trillion in credit default swaps, marking a 9.7% year-over-year increase.
Since its inception in 2000, ICE has primarily grown through acquiring other exchanges, starting with the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now known as ICE Futures Europe, in 2001.
In the next decade, the company continued to grow by acquiring the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) in 2005, the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange (now ICE Futures Canada) in 2007, Creditex Group in 2008, and Climate Exchange in 2010.
The following ten years saw even more acquisitions, including NYSE Euronext in 2013, Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) in 2015, Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations, Inc. in 2016, Virtu BondPoint in 2017, the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) in 2018, and Simplifile, LC in 2019.