Warren Buffett’s business invested $35 million in a struggling electricity company; Jeffrey Sprecher bought the near-bankrupt firm for $1,000 in 1997 and built an $85 billion giant

Intercontinental Exchange CEO and New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher’s business story began with a company that was struggling to survive. In 1997, Sprecher bought Continental Power Exchange from MidAmerican Energy, Warren Buffett’s electric utility business, for just $1,000. Nearly three decades later, the company he built from that starting point, Intercontinental Exchange, had reached an $85 billion market capitalization. Fortune reported that Sprecher’s personal fortune is now estimated at $1.2 billion.

Jeffrey Sprecher saw an opportunity in electricity trading

Sprecher did not come from Wall Street when he came up with the idea that would eventually lead to Intercontinental Exchange.

According to Fortune, he had never worked on Wall Street and had never traded. His idea was to create an exchange where electricity could be bought and sold. That led him to Continental Power Exchange, a company that was close to bankruptcy.


The business was owned by MidAmerican Energy, Warren Buffett’s electric utility company. Fortune reported that MidAmerican had invested $35 million in the company, but it was still struggling. Sprecher saw an opportunity and eventually bought the company.

He paid just $1,000 for the struggling business

Sprecher bought Continental Power Exchange for $1 a share, with 1,000 shares in total.

The purchase therefore cost him $1,000.

“I bought it for $1,000, and I used that as the basis to build Intercontinental Exchange,” Sprecher said, according to Fortune.

The $1,000 purchase was not a conventional stock-market investment that simply increased in value over time. Instead, Sprecher used the company as the foundation for building a much larger business around his idea for an electricity-trading exchange.

Intercontinental Exchange started with nine employees

Intercontinental Exchange was founded in 2000, three years after Sprecher bought Continental Power Exchange.

Fortune reported that the early company had a team of just nine employees who were building its technology in Atlanta.

The company's early days were far removed from the scale it would eventually reach. Sprecher lived in a 500-square-foot studio apartment and drove a used car while working on the business.

He also handled everyday office jobs himself, including taking out the trash, turning off the lights, answering the phone and buying supplies such as staplers and photocopier paper.

“That was the way the company started,” Sprecher said, according to Fortune.

The company eventually reached an $85 billion market cap

The business grew substantially over the following decades.

Fortune reported that nearly 26 years later, Intercontinental Exchange had an $85 billion market capitalization and more than 12,000 employees.

The company also went on to own the New York Stock Exchange, which it had held for more than a decade at the time of Fortune’s report.

That scale was a significant change from the struggling electricity-trading company Sprecher bought for $1,000 in 1997.

From a $1,000 purchase to a major financial company

Sprecher’s story is less about a $1,000 investment multiplying in the stock market and more about what he built from a struggling business.

He bought Continental Power Exchange after MidAmerican Energy had already invested $35 million in the company. Sprecher then used that acquisition as the basis for Intercontinental Exchange.

According to Fortune, the company eventually reached an $85 billion market capitalization, while Sprecher's personal fortune reached an estimated $1.2 billion.