The battle royal in the securities industry isn't between the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, or Wall Street vs. London, but between a 6-year-old Atlanta upstart in electronic commodities trading and the 134-year-old New York Mercantile Exchange.

Better known by its stock market trading symbol, ICE, IntercontinentalExchange is in the thick of today's highly volatile petroleum trading by handling about half the world's crude oil futures contracts on its Internet-based electronic trading platform.

Brant Sanderlin/Staff (ENLARGE)

Jeffrey Sprecher, founder, chairman and chief executive of IntercontinentalExchange: 'We are very much on the cutting edge in the use of the Internet for high-speed transactions.'

AT A GLANCE • Clickable ticker: ICE • Headquarters: Atlanta • CEO: Jeffrey C. Sprecher • Employees: 203 • Business: Owns, operates international electronic commodities trading platform via the Internet, serving buyers and sellers of petroleum, electricity and other energy products. • Online: theice.com REVENUE • 2005: $155.8 million • 2004: $108.4 million • 2003: $93.7 million • 2002: $125.4 million • 2001: $66.8 million NET INCOME • 2005: $40.4 million • 2004: $21.9 million • 2003: $13.3 million • 2002: $34.7 million • 2001: $15.7 million NET INCOME PER SHARE • 2005: 39 cents • 2004: 41 cents • 2003: 37 cents • 2002: 37 cents • 2001: 26 cents WANT REPRINTS? Our provider can reformat articles, with accompanying photos and graphics. Get more information on custom reprints — and custom plaques.

From its home office on the bluffs overlooking I-285 just north of Atlanta, IntercontinentalExchange owns Europe's largest commodity trading exchange, and can take substantial credit for preventing the collapse of Enron from resulting in a widespread disaster in energy trading markets.

Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE founder, chairman and chief executive, won't take full credit for forcing its chief rival, the Nymex and other old-line commodity traders, into adopting electronic trading.

But the Nymex has responded to ICE's competition by teaming with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to offer electronic trading in the oil market.

"It's not so much that we [forced the Nymex to automate]," says Sprecher. "The use of electronics is increasing. Our decision to go electronic was led by our customers starting to see the advantages of electronic trading."

But Sprecher, 51, a chemical engineer, one-time race car driver and early expert on Microsoft Word, concedes: "We are very much on the cutting edge in the use of the Internet for high-speed transactions. That is an alluring part of the tech business."

If you've ever bought or sold something on eBay, you have an idea of how ICE works. It provides an Internet platform for buyers and sellers of petroleum, electricity and natural gas futures contracts — agreements to buy or sell a commodity at a future date for a specified price.

ICE, which began handling West Texas Intermediate Crude futures on Feb. 3, trades about 50 percent of the world's crude oil futures, says Sprecher.

Why Atlanta?

ICE is based in Atlanta thanks to a local advantage that no longer exists.

"When I started working on the idea of ICE it was in mid-'90s, and it just so happened that Atlanta had good connectivity up the Eastern Seaboard and across the country in fiber-optic networks," he says. "It seemed like a good place as a hub of an electronic network. That specific attribute went away with the Internet, which is now everywhere."

Sprecher says he found other reasons to remain in Atlanta.

"Today Atlanta is very much a technology center due to the large number of universities, and is a mecca in the South for young people to come to school and look for first jobs. All of that plays into a high-tech culture we have that leads to the Internet. We recruit people from around the world."

The Atlanta company Sprecher acquired in 1997 — Continental Power Exchange — was the predecessor to ICE, which was formed in 2000. CPE hooked 63 utilities together electronically.

ICE was backed initially by seven corporate giants that participate in the wholesale commodities market: BP Products, the former Deutsche Bank Sharps Pixley, the Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley Capital Group, a Royal Dutch Shell affiliate, Societe Generale Financial Corp. and Total Investments USA. Inc. Later in 2000, six major natural gas and power companies acquired interests in ICE, including Mirant Americas Energy Marketing and Duke Energy Trading Exchange.

The company made a major expansion in 2001 by acquiring the International Petroleum Exchange in London, where it now trades ICE futures in Europe.

Enron was ahead of ICE in establishing online commodities trading, but ICE was on hand after the collapse of Enron in December 2001 to pick up the pieces and play a pivotal role in maintaining trading in electricity.

"The market didn't miss a beat, and we did not have a rash of bankruptcies. We had a strong role in that," says Sprecher.

ICE went public last November with the largest stock offering in Georgia history: $416 million at $26 per share. Traded on the New York Stock Exchange, ICE has become the 13th-biggest Georgia-based corporation by market value at $6.26 billion.

ICE operates two marketplaces: a futures exchange open to investors of all kinds, including individuals, and an over-the-counter exchange for heavy hitters such as Goldman Sachs, with a qualifying limit of at least $100 million in assets. The latter is a marketplace for energy providers, where they can exchange supertanker-sized cargos of oil, for example. Both markets are on the Internet.

With oil near $70 per barrel and gasoline still high at the pump, it's not surprising that consumers and politicians are looking for somebody to blame for high oil prices.

But Sprecher argues that it's a mistake to pin the oil price rap totally on "speculators," since in today's market commodities have emerged as viable investments for pension funds, mutual funds, trust funds and individual investors — not just high-risk hedge funds and traders.