Leo Melamed is an American attorney, finance executive, and a pioneer of financial futures. He is the chairman emeritus of CME Group.
Personal life
Melamed was born Leibel Melamdovich to a Jewish family in Bialystok, Poland in 1932 to Isaac Melamdovich, a mathematics teacher. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the family fled to Lithuania to avoid capture by the Nazis. In 1940, the Japanese consul general to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, issued his family a life-saving transit visa, and they made the long trek across Siberia to safe haven in Japan. They crossed the Pacific to the United States in the spring of 1941, and the family settled in Chicago. Melamed is an avid contract bridge competitor and often pairs with his wife, Betty.
Career
Melamed, an attorney by profession, became involved in futures trading by accident. In law school, he was looking for a law clerk job and answered a want ad from a firm looking for a 'runner', thinking the firm, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, with that many names could be nothing but an established law firm, looking for a clerk to run to court. He worked as a runner in the produce futures markets of the CME throughout law school, learning about the business. He practiced law until 1965 and was elected to the CME board in 1967. Melamed became chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1969. In 1972, under his leadership, the CME created the International Monetary Market, the world's first financial futures exchange, and launched currency futures. In the years that followed, Melamed led the CME and IMM in the creation of a number of financial instruments, including futures on US Treasury bills in 1976, Eurodollars in 1981, and stock index futures in 1982. In 1987, Melamed spearheaded the creation and introduction of Globex, the world's first electronic trading system, and became its founding chairman. Throughout the next three decades and into the 21st century, Melamed held many CME titles including: Special Counsel to the Board, Chairman of the Executive Committee, and Senior Policy Advisor, but remained the acknowledged leader of the CME. In 2002, he led the CME membership to become the first U.S. financial exchange to go public. In 2014, he was a board member of CME Group and chairman of its Strategic Steering Committee. In 1991, he founded his own consulting firm, Melamed & Associates, of which he is chairman and chief executive officer. He used to be a member of the global markets advisory committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and has served as a special advisor on futures markets to governments worldwide. Melamed serves on the prestigious Chinese International Advisory Council of Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission.
Recognition and awards
Twenty years after their inception, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Merton Miller, named financial futures "the most significant innovation of the past two decades". At the close of 1999, the former editor of the Chicago Tribune named Melamed "among the ten most important Chicagoans in business of the 20th Century". He was named a Lincoln Laureate in 2016 in the area of Business, Industry & Communications.
