Winner
Financial Services
If Tom Ricketts has as much success with the Chicago Cubs as he has had with Incapital Holdings LLC, he’ll go down in history as a truly legendary figure in the Windy City.
Ricketts’ family acquired the historic baseball club in 2009 and Ricketts became the Cubs’ chairman. But since 2000, he’s been helping to provide the liquidity necessary to make things happen around the world through his successful investment bank. Incapital has underwritten corporate bonds for well-known issuers such as Bank of America, GE Capital Corp., HSBC Finance, Freddie Mac, Boeing Capital, Caterpillar Financial, Dow Chemical and American Express.
Ricketts, the firm’s co-founder, chairman and CEO, developed the idea for Incapital out of two pilot investment banking operations in which he assumed much of the financial risk.
He was willing to take the risk because he was confident he could formulate an executable business plan and his ability to do so became evident in the early months of Incapital’s formation. The plan was comprehensive and involved a technology focus that potential competitors lacked.
With the opportunity to build systems from scratch, Incapital was able to customize its technology for the direct benefit of both bond issuers and bond distributors.
Ricketts encourages his employees to constantly seek continuing education and opportunities to improve their skills. Often that’s through the attainment of new degrees, but Ricketts also provides in-house training and education through all-company meetings. And it’s all to provide an environment of growth and to keep people consistently moving forward.
But it’s not just the growth of the company Ricketts pursues. He encourages his employees to join him in supporting worthy charitable causes from breast cancer research and wounded veterans to disaster relief and needy families. Whether it’s business or philanthropy, Ricketts wants to win.
How to reach: Incapital Holdings LLC, (312) 379-3700 or www.incapital.com
