Leo melamed biography

Leo Melamed is chairman emeritus at CME Group. He served as a CME board member from 1967 through his retirement in 2018. He also is chairman and CEO of Melamed & Associates, Inc., a global consulting firm.

Melamed is widely credited with being the "founder of financial futures" for his role in the listing of financial futures. In particular, the emergence of foreign currency futures and the 1972 establishment of the International Monetary Market at CME put Melamed squarely on the map in the financial community. Yet his influence at the exchange was much broader over the years, including the 1992 launch of the CME's electronic trading platform Globex. That system would prove to be the backbone for the CME and its global growth in the following decades.

He was the founding chairman of the National Futures Association and served as chairman from its creation in 1981 until 1989.

He serves on the board of LEAP Innovations, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization connecting innovation and education.

Early Background

Born in Poland, Melamed and his parents fled the Nazis in 1939 following the outbreak of World War II.

His family traveled across Europe and Siberia to Vladivostok, the Eastern Russian seaport. The issuance of a transit visa by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul General to Lithuania, enabled the Melamdovich family to leave Russia and find safe haven in Japan.

In 1941 the family was admitted to the United States and settled in Chicago, where Melamed's parents worked as Yiddish school teachers for the Sholem Aleichem Folks Institute.

Melamed grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago and attended Roosevelt High School, where he met his wife, Betty Sattler.

CME Background

Melamed was a Chicago attorney for a number of years but mai

American businessman (born 1932)

Leo Melamed (born March 20, 1932) is an American attorney, finance executive, and a pioneer of financial futures. He is the chairman emeritus of CME Group (formerly the Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

Personal life

Melamed was born Leibel Melamdovich in 1932 in Bialystok, Poland into a Jewish family, to two school teachers, Fayga (Barakin) Melamdovich and Isaac Melamdovich (a mathematics teacher). In 1939, following Germany's invasion of Poland and with the outbreak of World War II, his 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 Tsuruga, Japan. They crossed the Pacific to the United States in the spring of 1941, and the family settled in Chicago.

Melamed married Betty Sattler on December 26, 1953. The couple has three children: Idelle Sharon, Jordan Norman and David Jeffrey.

Melamed is an avid contract bridge competitor and often pairs with his wife, Betty.

Melamed's personal life and his strained relationship with his son are the subjects of the 2012 documentary Futures Past, written and directed by his son, Jordan Melamed.

Career

Melamed received his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in 1952 and his law degree from John Marshall Law School in 1955. He became involved in futures trading by accident. While 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 that would be looking for a clerk to "run" to court. Instead, he worked as a runner in the produce futures markets of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange while in law school a

Leo Melamed | 2022 Financial Innovation Award Recipient

Leo Melamed is the founder of financial futures. In 1972, as chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group), he revolutionized markets with the creation of the International Monetary Market (IMM)--the first futures exchange for financial instruments and the launch of currency futures. In the years that followed, Melamed led the CME in the introduction of a diverse number of financial instruments including Treasury Bills in 1976, Eurodollars in 1981, and Stock Index Futures in 1982. Twenty years after their inception, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Merton Miller, named Financial Futures as “the most significant innovation of the past two decades.”

In 1987, Melamed revolutionized futures trading again with the founding of Globex® the world’s first futures electronic trading system. Melamed, a Holocaust survivor, found safety in the US during World War II. The story of his escape as a child from Bialystok, Poland, as he and his parents miraculously outwitted the Nazis and the KGB, was an odyssey that took two years, spanned three continents, six languages, the Trans-Siberian railroad, and Japan--courtesy of a life-saving transit visa from Japanese Counsel General to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara--happily ending in the United States in 1941. Melamed is Chairman Emeritus of the CME Group and was a member of its Board, and chairman of its Strategic Steering Committee until his retirement in May of 2018.

In 1982, Mr. Melamed led the futures industry in the creation of the National Futures Association (NFA), an industrywide self-regulatory organization. He serves as its Permanent Special Advisor. Melamed has been an adviser to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and has served as special adviser on futures markets to governments worldwide. In 2010, he was appointed to the International Advisory Council (IAC) of the China Securities Regulatory Commission