Michael Spencer

Spencer was born in British Malaya. His father was an economist and international civil servant, his mother a linguist. During Spencer's early childhood, his family moved from his birth country to Sudan and then Ethiopia. Aged eight, he was sent to England to board, latterly at Worth School in Sussex. He read physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Spencer is an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and an Honorary Doctor of Loughborough University.

Early career

In 1976, he joined city broker Simon and Coates. In 1981, he joined Drexel Burnham, rising to vice president before being fired for trading errors. From 1983 to 1986 he was a Director at futures firm Charles Fulton; when that firm floated, Spencer used £50,000 from his proceeds to co-found his first business, along with three colleagues.

IPGL and other business interests

Spencer holds stakes in numerous public and private companies.

Finance investments

In 1997, Spencer purchased a controlling interest in spread betting firm City Index Group, acquiring his stake from the firm's founders. City Index was later sold for $118m to financial services company GAIN Capital, netting Spencer more than $80m.

He is chairman, director and majority shareholder in IPGL, a private holding company making investments on behalf of Spencer and other family trusts. He is a former investor in Temple Grange Partners, a consultancy that finds compliance specialists for financial markets. He is a co-owner of Tellimer (formerly Exotix), an emerging markets investment banking boutique. He has led investment rounds in various fintech firms, including file regeneration technology firm Glasswall Solutions and FX data analytics firm Tradefeedr.

In 2018, he became chairman and majority shareholder of Faro Capital Ltd (formerly FCFM).

In 2021, Spencer became cornerstone investor in a $130m venture capital fund at Element Ventures, focusing on b2b financial enterprise technology. He also holds stakes in payment platform Klarna, wealth manager AJ Bell and online investment advisor Nutmeg.

Spencer is a former chairman of stockbroker Numis Securities. He is also an investor in Martin Gilbert's AssetCo.

In January 2022, Spencer invested £10 million in a new global fund launched by Toscafund Asset Management. The fund aims to invest in both public and private companies worldwide.

Spencer is a seed investor in Nutshell Asset Management, a hybrid AI and active management fund. In December 2024, he boosted his ownership stake from 25% to 40% and became chairman. In December 2024, Spencer won a £20,000 bet against Terry Smith's Fundsmith Equity fund, wagering that Nutshell would outperform Fundsmith that year. He donated his winnings to the Royal Osteoporosis Society. Spencer believes Nutshell will grow to rival Fundsmith's £30bn in assets under management. In an interview with Merryn Somerset Webb for Bloomberg, Spencer observed that high-turnover investment strategies, once constrained by transaction costs, have become more practical due to structural changes in the market.

In April 2024 Spencer received a £210m windfall following the sale of his stake in Singapore Life, an online savings platform for Singaporean and Asian markets. Spencer had originally invested £54m in 2017. The firm was acquired by Japan's Sumitomo Life Insurance in a deal led by IPGL.

He is sceptical of cryptocurrencies and does not invest in them, citing the absence of dividends.

In 2008, Spencer divorced his first wife Lorraine. They had two sons and a daughter, and homes in Notting Hill, Suffolk and Manhattan.

In June 2016, Spencer married Sarah, Marchioness of Milford Haven in London, the daughter of George Alfred Walker and Jean Maureen (née Hatton), and former wife of George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven – a second cousin of King Charles III.

Spencer has homes in London, and Kenya. Who's Who lists his hobbies as running, riding, shooting, wine and art; he is also reported to be an aviation enthusiast. Spencer's wife runs a horse-breeding programme. She has a stud farm in Laikipia and has been a champion owner in Kenya several times. Her horse Freewheeler, a South African-bred colt, won the 2018 Kenya Derby at Ngong.

He collects twentieth century and contemporary art, including the work of Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud and Jack Vettriano. Spencer is a former shareholder and an associate director of Ipswich Town Football Club.

Spencer is a member of several London clubs, including White's, Beefsteak Club, 5 Hertford Street and 67 Pall Mall, as well as Muthaiga Country Club in Kenya.

In 1993, Spencer founded the ICAP Charity Day, an annual event in which royalty and celebrities man the trading desks at ICAP and the broking firm donates the day's revenue to charities. As of February 2017, the event has raised over £170 million and backed 2,200 charitable projects. He has said that the Charity Day is his proudest achievement in business, alongside breaking into the FTSE100 with ICAP.

Various public individuals have manned the phones for Charity Day, including Prince William and Catherine Middleton, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Mo Farah, Chris Hoy, George W. Bush, Samantha Cameron, Cheryl Cole, Tom Hardy, Halle Berry, Daniel Craig, and Chris Hemsworth.

Spencer is a founder and trustee of the Borana Conservation Trust, a charity which supports critically endangered species in Kenya's Borana and Laikipia regions. It created the Borana Conservancy, a 94,000 acre sanctuary that in 2013 reintroduced 21 black rhinos after a 50-year absence from the region. The Conservancy is supported by Save the Rhino.

The Spencer Family Foundation has backed a number of philanthropic initiatives, including a £1 million donation toward the British Normandy Memorial, dedicated to soldiers who died under British command during the Normandy landings. The Foundation also donated £100,000 to the Remember Me Covid memorial at St Paul's and a six-figure sum to the Mail Force campaign for PPE for hospitals, care homes and charities.

Spencer was Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 2006 to 2007, during which time the party's finances moved from a deficit of £8m into a surplus. In 2020, he became Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank and pressure group founded by Margaret Thatcher. He is also Chairman of the Conservative Party Foundation, a company established to strengthen the financial future of the Conservative Party.

Spencer is a long-standing donor to the Conservative Party, giving £250,000 during the 2024 UK General Election campaign. ICAP and Spencer have previously made a reported £4.6m in donations to the party, although Spencer was critical of the May government's business policies.

In 2012 it was reported that he maintained personal contact with the then Prime Minister David Cameron. Spencer was nominated for a peerage in Cameron's resignation honours list for charity fundraising and service to the Conservative Party while its treasurer, but reportedly, his nomination was blocked by the Cabinet Office.

Spencer has been reported to favour positive discrimination employment policies for women but is against gender-based employment quotas since he believes that they wrongly presuppose prejudice by all male employers. He has criticised the British government's pay gap review as a distraction from Brexit. Spencer was among the first to employ female brokers in the city. He opposes MiFID II, tax surcharges on UK bank profits. He has frequently criticised stamp duty on share transactions in the UK, calling it a major obstacle to market competitiveness.

He voted for the UK to remain in the EU, but later said that he had long been undecided on the issue, and that his Remain vote was cast without "great angelical zeal". In 2017, following a shareholder revolt, he agreed to pay back donations of £5,000 each made by his company, NEX, to five Conservative candidates running against Liberal Democrats who had supported the "Remain" campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

After the sale of NEX, Spencer spoke about becoming a cheerleader for enterprise after the sale of NEX. He was nominated for a life peerage in the 2020 Political Honours and created Baron Spencer of Alresford, of Alresford in the County of Hampshire on 17 September. He made his maiden speech in November 2021, a year after he entered the Lords. He increased his net worth by owning Helio's 8% stake from HCSM.