IG Group Holdings.
IG Group Holdings plc offers financial derivatives, including Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and financial spread betting, to retail and professional clients. [1] . IG Group is the parent company of IG Index, the UK's largest and longest-running spread betting business and IG Markets, the UK’s number one CFD provider. IG Group is also the parent of Nadex and extrabet.com.
The group is now one of the UK’s top 200 firms and is listed on the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE 250 and has a market capitalization of _2.92 billion as of March 2016. [2]
It is based in London with operations in 17 countries. It opened its first overseas office, in Melbourne, Australia, in 2002.
History [ edit ]
IG Group was founded in 1974 as the original spread betting house, which at the time offered a new way for people to trade on the price of gold by dealing on the price of an index rather than trading the commodity itself. Over the years the firm spread the concept to other products and, as the internet emerged in the late 1990s as a venue for trading, IG Group introduced online dealing.
In 2003 IG Group introduced binary options and in 2007, the company purchased the assets of HedgeStreet, the forerunner to US-based binary platform Nadex.
IG Group launched its second Swiss bank in Z_rich in 2018 (after Geneva in 2014), and in 2015 opened a Dubai (UAE) office.
On January 21, 2021, IG Group said it had agreed to buy U.S. brokerage and financial education firm tastytrade Inc. for $1 billion -- $300 million in cash and 61.0 million IG shares valued at $700 million. IG Group said the acquisition of Chicago-based tastytrade would significantly increase the scale of IG’s existing U.S. business and allow the company to benefit from recent growth in "self-directed" retail investing in U.S. listed options and futures. [3] [4]
In late February 2021, IG Group said it had suspended leveraged trading in 900 shares in response to volatile trading conditions in certain small stocks. IG customers are allowed to buy the affected shares, but they must supply their own capital to cover those positions. [5]