IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE: ICE), the leading electronic energy marketplace, today announced that its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jeffrey C. Sprecher, was named one of five finalists for the prestigious MarketWatch CEO of the Year award for 2006. An extensive profile of Sprecher was published on the MarketWatch website early this morning.
Sprecher’s placement on the short list was part of a three-month selection process that included nominations by MarketWatch reporters who were asked to suggest names of outstanding U.S. public company executives from throughout Corporate America. From those nominations, a panel of MarketWatch senior editors narrowed the group down to five finalists, and reporters were assigned to produce a profile on each executive’s performance in 2006. According to MarketWatch: ”The editors selected the CEOs on the basis of their track records this year in four main areas: stock price, performance for customers, treatment of employees and corporate-governance initiatives.”
MarketWatch editors made the final deliberations and early this morning announced Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., as the 2006 CEO of the Year. Sprecher was the only CEO selected from the financial services sector. The other finalists were Continental Airlines’ Larry Kellner, General Mills CEO Stephen Sanger and Amylin Pharmaceuticals CEO Ginger Graham.
“It is an incredible honor to be selected as a finalist among this accomplished group of corporate leaders,” Sprecher said. “As a relatively young company that just celebrated our one-year anniversary as a publicly traded company, ICE has been able to bring ground-breaking change to the marketplace. We are particularly gratified to be recognized for excellence in serving our customers, shareholders and employees, and we continue in our unwavering dedication to these constituencies.”
The MarketWatch profile by reporter Greg Morcroft , entitled “Intercontinental’s Drift: Jeffrey Sprecher and his Crew are Market Re-Makers,” is available at marketwatch.com.
MarketWatch credited Sprecher with guiding “…the upstart IntercontinentalExchange through a year of unprecedented growth and consolidation in the financial-exchange business, which has led to soaring valuations and a restructuring of the centuries-old open-outcry trading model around the globe.” The article also cited the company’s 2006 achievements of opening energy markets to new investors and expanding the company’s business into agricultural commodities through its planned acquisition of the New York Board of Trade.
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