Interview: Markit chief Lance Uggla - 'How I crunched the numbers to create a £500m City fortune'

Its ABX.HE index of the sub-prime mortgage market was required viewing during the financial crisis and its Purchasing Managers’ Indices signal growth in the manufacturing, construction and services sectors ahead of the official numbers. Markit has 3,000 customers, out of which 100 provide trading data and it processes 80,000 derivatives a day.

To get going, Uggla had to convince a dozen investment banks to share their data with him in exchange for an equity stake down the line. “Within a week of each other, they all became shareholders,” he says of Barclays, Bank of America and others, which held 50% of the business early on, dropping to a third post-float. Being the boss meant Uggla could work where he wanted.

“The barn was quite close to my house — it wasn’t in my back garden. It was just an opportunity to work closer to home and spend more time with my children,” he says.

That was fine until Markit really took off and Uggla transplanted the firm back to the City to be nearer clients.

Now his three growth prongs are transparency, helping institutions with risk and reducing costs from increased regulation. New regulation means a greater proportion of derivatives trades are being forced through clearing houses, which Markit can connect clients to. It also values clients’ portfolios on their behalf.

“Those channels for growth are very buoyant; we are not going up against a brick wall.”

But the company is strictly pre-trade and post-trade — you won’t see it diving into the kind of dark pools that have got Barclays in trouble this week.

A 2009 US Justice Department probe into possible anti-trust violations in the credit default swap market that centred on the control of prices turned up nothing.

One thing it is not going to get into supplying its own trading screens to clients, like Reuters and Bloomberg. Markit provides information to both of them. Surprisingly, neither has tried to acquire his firm: “Nobody ever called me.”

But they do work together. Markit is developing something called Collaboration with Reuters — not exactly a messaging platform but something that “allows messaging platforms to connect together through a single directory”.

Uggla first lived in London when he studied at the London School of Economics in 1986. That time, he returned to Toronto. He came back in 1995 when Toronto Dominion Bank appointed him to run its global credit portfolio, heading up Europe and Asia.

He is still evangelical about London’s appeal: “For non-dollar activities, it is the financial centre and as you look into Asia from here, Eastern Europe and Africa, this is the focal point. I don’t see that lessening. Planes down to Africa from here are full of bankers looking for opportunities to expand and work further afield.”

He has even taken British citizenship. “I just felt this was home. It wasn’t a hard decision. My kids have all studied here.”

The benefits of staying local are obvious as Uggla pays the bill and exits the busy City café. Don’t be surprised if he dips into London’s burgeoning fintech scene to snap up the next big thing.

CV milestones

1986 CIBC global head of fixed income

1995 TD Securities global head of credit trading and head of Europe and Asia

2003 Markit founder and chief executive

Personal life

Three daughters and a son. Separated. Relaxes by skiing and following Arsenal.

Best advice I've received

“My first boss told me that your most successful attributes don’t come from studying at university, they are things that we all have: good manners and a work ethic.”