Financial corruption is not new, but it should be elevated to the front page when it involves certain people and institutions—such as the New York Stock Exchange, the global symbol of American capitalism.
This is the case of the New York Stock Exchange chairman, Jeff Sprecher, and the insider trading of his wife, the former Republican Senator from Georgia, Kelly Loeffler.
The marriage of this political power couple made Loeffler the wealthiest person in Congress, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. Her husband, Jeff Sprecher, is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange chairman.
Both are huge contributors to President Donald Trump, who has never been known to turn away a substantial campaign contribution without reciprocating, especially if he does not have to pay for the reward.
So, in exchange for the couple’s $4.9 million contributions to Trump, Loeffler was nominated to be the chairman of the Small Business Administration, even though she has no experience managing a small business. The Senate confirmed her to the post in a vote across party lines on Feb. 19, 2025.
She was senior vice president of corporate communications, marketing, and investor relations at the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) when she met Sprecher, who is 15 years older than her. Sprecher and Loeffler were married in 2004.
The couple made significant contributions to Trump, and she defended Trump’s election denial claims in her home state of Georgia. She got fortunate when Loeffler, a short-term Senator from Georgia, got her “get out of jail free card” after the special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, recommended that charges against her, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and former GOP Sens. David Perdue, be filed, according to the special counsel grand jury report released Sept. 8, 2023.
But, in a lucky move by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, she did not charge the lawmakers when she returned an indictment last month against Trump and 18 co-defendants in that sprawling vote-fixing racketeering case.
She was then named as an interim Senator from Georgia to serve a term from 2020 to 2021.
Loeffler was a prominent Trump apologist and will do anything to appease Trump supporters. In this video clip, Loeffler is repeatedly asked who won the 2020 election but cannot say Biden won. She may have changed her response after her Republican handlers gave her the OK. When Trump and his wife contracted COVID, Loeffler Tweeted, “China gave this virus to our President. WE MUST HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.”
The New York Times reported that when Loeffler left the ICE, where her husband is CEO, “she appeared to have received stock and other awards worth more than $9 million from Intercontinental Exchange, when she left her position there to serve in the Senate, according to securities filings, Ms. Loeffler’s financial disclosure form and interviews with compensation and accounting experts.”
The ICE is designated as a self-regulatory organization accountable to the SEC for its corporate governance practices. The reason Loeffler deserved a $9 million severance package should be made public, but the 10-member ICE board of directors and compensation committee appear to be a rubber-stamp operation. They have never given a reason why Loeffler deserved the $10 million, except that she is Sprecher’s wife.
The Insider Trading Scandal That Vanished
In 2020, Senator Loeffler was involved in an insider trading scandal. At that time, Loeffler was accused of trading on information she received in a confidential briefing about the impact of the COVID-19 virus. She and her financial advisors then sold stocks so that the virus would hurt.
Reuters reported that “Loeffler and her husband Jeff Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange company, sold millions of dollars worth of stock from late January through mid-February, including transactions in shares later affected by the global pandemic. The transactions, as first reported by The Daily Beast, were before the coronavirus-induced stock market meltdown.”
After an investigation, the Justice Department dropped charges against Loeffler and Sprecher in the insider trading case.
Like all other stock, futures, and options exchanges, the ICE has insider trading regulations. Specifically, the ICE’s own Global Personal Trading Policy Version 1.19, dated February 2025, the policy states: “Transactions by Family or Household Members The same restrictions regarding insider trading and tipping that apply to Company Persons apply to their Family and Household Members (defined in Section I.B of this Policy). You will be held responsible for compliance with the insider trading prohibitions in this Policy by your Family and Household Members. In fact, regulatory authorities have made clear that the giving or receipt of information to or from a spouse, parent, child, friend, or sibling, and subsequent trading on that information, will in most cases, provide a sufficient basis for insider trading liability, both for the person trading on the Material Non-public Information and for the person tipping such information.”
So, with this policy in place, did Spracher face an internal ICE investigation into his wife’s insider trading activities? Also, what were the results? Didn’t this situation pose a massive problem for the NYSE and ICE Corporate Governance rules? Or is insider trading now an accepted policy at the NYSE and ICE?
More Insider Trading in Congress
Coming from a trading and opportunistic profession, Loeffler then engaged in stock trading in one of the most favorite pastimes of those in Congress. Given her position and those of other Congressmen, Loeffler would legally engage in insider trading. That is a perk of an elected Congressman, and it is a loophole that has been identified and never closed for decades, and for good reason: Almost every Congressman who ever entered office had left with more money than when they entered, excluding their salary.
This insider trading activity can be tracked on the website Quiver Quantitative. There is also an informative YouTube video that explains insider trading, which is not classified as a crime because Congress does it. But if the average citizen does it, they go to jail for many years.
The Symbol of American Capitalism Is Tainted by Trump
The NYSE is a symbol of American and global capitalism. It is arguably the best-known symbol of the free market system in the world.
Historically, the chairman of the NYSE has been above reproach in terms of actual or perceived conflicts of interest or, of course, any crimes.
This has been the case since 1792, when the NYSE was formed to trade bonds from the Revolutionary War. In its history, the NYSE has had some scandals involving senior executives, but none that involved its chairman.
In 2003, the NYSE was in the news when then-NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso received an eye-popping $188.8 million bonus when he retired. This bonus attracted the attention of former New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, who put pressure on a former NYSE
Executive Vice President with authority over human resources and executive compensation after it was discovered that he intimidated NYSE board members to support Grasso’s record-breaking bonus package.
In this single story, students of Wall Street’s pathological behavior saw examples of fiduciary breaches, the failure of independent board directors to fulfill their duties, and an astounding application of greed. In short, this short story has all the elements of a solid corporate case study of pathological corporate behavior inside the symbol of American capitalism.
(In the interests of full disclosure, I am a former NYSE employee and have met Grasso and Frank Ashen, the former NYSE executive vice president, who reached a plea agreement with Spitzer to avoid being charged with a criminal breach of fiduciary duty.)
In brief, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (Grasso), a former Director, and the Exchange, citing violations of New York’s Not-for-Profit Corporation Law in awarding an excessive compensation package.
The civil lawsuit comes after Spitzer’s office’s four-month investigation determined that NYSE directors were misled about various aspects of the $187.5 million payment package awarded by the Exchange to former Chairman and CEO Richard Grasso.
In a related action, Spitzer announced settlements with an NYSE executive and an independent consultant, who admitted providing inaccurate and incomplete information to the board.
The suit asked a state court judge to rescind the pay package and determine a “reasonable” level of compensation for Mr. Grasso. It was filed today in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit names Grasso and Kenneth G. Langone, former chairman of the NYSE Compensation Committee.” Langone is a former founder of The Home Depot.
The New York Stock Exchange was named in the suit because it failed to ensure compliance with the not-for-profit law and made excessive payments to Grasso.
This was a huge disgrace for the NYSE.
Sprecher: The Compromised NYSE Chairman
Insider trading is the most severe charge facing any exchange’s Compliance Department. However, the NYSE Compliance Department looked the other way when Sprecher was charged.
The NYSE is a Designated Self-Regulatory Organization (DSRO) and can investigate and punish member firms and their top executives without SEC approval. As a publicly traded company now owned by ICE, the NYSE must comply with the same standards it applies to its own listed companies.
According to the exchange’s own rules, Sprecher violated the following:
• NYSE Rule 2010. Standards of Commercial Honor and Principles of Trade; and,
• NYSE Rule 303A.10 Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, including its conflict-of-interest provisions and insider trading rules, says explicitly, “The listed company should proactively promote compliance with laws, rules, and regulations, including insider trading laws. Insider trading is unethical and illegal and should be dealt with decisively.
The US Justice Department dismissed the couple’s insider trading charges, citing SEC Rule b5-1. This rule allows company insiders to sell a predetermined number of shares at a predetermined time.
The NYSE Board also can reprimand Sprecher, but it was publicly silent when the insider trading charges were announced. Maybe that is because Sprecher, as chairman, also controls the NYSE board, its Compensation Committee, and the parent company (ICE) that owns exchanges worldwide. If they choose to use it, the board also has the authority to punish or remove Sprecher. But they proved too spineless to take any action.
As part of its now-abandoned tradition, the NYSE held itself beyond reproach. Even “the appearance of impropriety” was enough for an executive to be reprimanded or removed from their job if they engaged in a public altercation or were accused of a felony that made the news.
Today, in the Trump era, those civic norms are ignored. Trump, as a convicted felon, runs the country, and he has put other white-collar criminals in federal positions that flaunt civil conventions. The NYSE, the global symbol of American capitalism, now falls into that camp.
