Profile: Michael Spencer of Icap

Michael Spencer once described himself as “the sad person you see reading the FT on the beach”. But when the City’s richest man scans through his press cuttings this week, he shouldn’t be too disappointed with the coverage.

Michael Spencer once described himself as "the sad person you see reading the FT on the beach". But when the City's richest man scans through his press cuttings this week, he shouldn't be too disappointed with the coverage.

News that his firm Icap (IAP), the world's biggest inter-dealer broker, had walked away from a putative £6bn tie-up with the London Stock Exchange, had commentators lamenting what might have been. "The white knight rode in and rode on," observed James Harding in The Times. "Paternoster Square is left exposed."

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More

Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.