Ex-Liffe chief Ibbotson joins ICE Futures Europe as non-exec director

Former Liffe chief executive Mark Ibbotson has become an independent director of ICE Futures Europe, the London-based exchange created after ICE’s acquisition of Liffe in 2013.

Ibbotson, who stepped down as chair of broker G.H. Financials in February, was appointed as an independent non-executive director of ICE Futures Europe on April 9, according to Companies House.

Ibbotson’s appointment takes to ten the number of ICE Futures Europe directors, including Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) chair and chief executive Jeffrey Sprecher, president of ICE Futures Europe Chris Rhodes and William Hague, the life peer and former member of parliament who was foreign secretary in David Cameron’s government.

A spokeswoman for ICE declined to comment on the appointment.

Ibbotson left G.H. Financials in late February after a decade with the London-based broker to be replaced by Jerome Kemp, the former head of futures at J.P. Morgan and Citigroup.

Ibbotson, who joined GHF as chief executive in late 2013 before becoming its non-executive chairman in 2018, was said by the London-based futures clearer to be leaving to “pursue another opportunity in the market”.

Before joining G.H. Financials in September 2013, Ibbotson spent 23 years with Liffe, latterly as chief executive and global head of clearing.

In his time there, the exchange was sold to Euronext then the New York Stock Exchange and finally Intercontinental Exchange, to whose London-based clearing house Ibbotson transferred the Liffe clearing business in his final act at the firm. ICE acquired NYSE Euronext in November 2013 for $11bn (£8.6bn), the US group’s most valuable acquisition at that time.

Since leaving Liffe, Ibbotson has also served as a non-executive director of trade body FIA, an independent non-executive director of Oberon Investments and as a non-executive on the Financial Conduct Authority’s Markets Practitioner Panel.

ICE Futures Europe became last week the first exchange to hit 100,000 lots of open interest in euro short-term rate (ESTR) futures, marking a milestone for the business in the growing European rates market.

Trabue Bland, the senior vice president of futures exchanges at ICE who is also a director of ICE Futures Europe, said last week the US group is looking to work with index provider FTSE Russell on volatility indexes, daily options and environmental, social and governance (ESG) futures.