Exchange CEO Pay: The Ocean’s 11

I discussed “The Magnificent 7” of the top earners amongst the world of exchanges / market structure, all with salaries above $10 million.

Today I’m looking at what I term “The Ocean’s 11” which is a series of 11 CEOs in the market structure we found data for and thought it interesting to peruse their salaries. Note this is not a rank, doubtless, others made more than $1 million and could qualify but it struck me as interesting to peruse the overall basis of these salaries as an illustrative snapshot of some leading bourse earners.

While his company trails in market cap terms just behind the leaders of Young’s Pyramid Tier 1 (CME, ICE, HKEX) the Refinitiv-expanded @LSEG is at least not a crazed spendthrift with David Schwimmer’s salary coming to $7.96 million not much more than half those of his peers (or barely a third of Terry Duffy’s $22.89 package which aroused shareholder dissent at the recent CME AGM).

The other CEOs here are predominantly running tier 2 Young’s pyramid entities while Leila Fourie, the ‘lowest’ salaried person here made $1.03 million last year.

Amongst the standout numbers are Schwimmer and DB1’s Theodor Weimer ($6.14) whose pay amounts to barely 0.02% of the market cap of their companies, compared to the JSE boss who is at 0.17% alongside the TP ICAP boss Nicolas Breteau whose $2.13 million is a similar ratio to market capitalization - largely thanks to his salary being a reward for what has been an ongoing collapse in TP ICAP market capitalization even when there was a ‘go go’ bull market all those (9 and a half) weeks ago.

By means of comparison, Flutter owns the Betfair exchange but is predominantly a gambling enterprise and their CEO is included here, Peter Jackson whose $1.15 million salary is a fraction - but 0.01% of his firm’s market cap.

It’s interesting to note that the relative to market cap salary of MarketAxess CEO Rick McVey ($5.74 m) is 0.06% of his market cap, compared to the 0.1% ratio of Tradeweb's CEO Lee Olesky who was in the Magnificent 7 rating I mentioned earlier.

One other point to ponder is how the ASX CEO is at the 0.03% salary/market cap ratio which is the equivalent of the likes of ICE and HKEX’s CEOs albeit the ASX CEO Dominic Stevens is now headed on a retirement path after the ongoing ignominious failure of his CHESS upgrade programme despite his self-styling ASX as a “technology firm.”

There are lots of data points to ponder here and it’s an interesting comparison, albeit not intended to be scientific (see also my previous article for notes on the market cap / salary ratio calculations). However, it’s a fascinating series of points to ponder and indeed may provoke a water cooler moment or two qv is the buccaneering dealmaker Stéphane Boujnah value for money at $3.2 million compared to his peers (I am minded to say yes… as he does deals and seems to integrate as well if not better than any previous Euronext management?).

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You can also check out the “Reflections From Young’s Pyramid”, it illustrates the relative value of exchanges around the world.

Or the “ICE Cost of Borrowing 2020–2022” An Interest Rate Comparison, which illustrates the end of the funny money era of QE and how interest rates have already had a major lurch up from their previous region of zero to, even negative, levels.

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