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CMC Markets to sell shares to retail investors

The broker and spread-better plans to float on the stock market next year and will offer its shares to small investors, including its own customers

Peter Cruddas founded CMC Markets and is its chief executive

Financial trading and spread-betting firm CMC Markets plans to sell shares to its own customers when it floats on the stock market next year.

CMC, which is headed by Peter Cruddas and part-owned by Goldman Sachs, has considered floating for several years but now sees itself as ready to take the plunge as soon as market conditions are suitable for a successful sale.

The firm has not given an expected valuation, but it could sell for around £1bn.

The group has also appointed two new non-executive directors – investment banker Manjit Wolstenholme and former EY and Deloitte partner Malcolm McCaig – to bolster its board as it prepares to go public.

“The plan is that we would like to do a retail client offering, we’d like the clients to participate, and there will be an offering to them, and indeed to future clients,” said Mr Cruddas, the chief executive who founded the firm in 1989.

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CMC Markets was founded in 1989. Peter Cruddas owns 90pc of the firm, while Goldman Sachs owns 10pc.

Finance director Grant Foley said: “We are working towards a flotation some time next year, but I can’t be specific about the timing as it depends on a number of market-related factors which are out of our control, but we are working with our advisors.”

Those advisors are investment bankers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Mr Cruddas and Mr Foley were speaking as CMC Markets published interim results for the first half of its 2015-16 financial year.

The group’s underlying profit before tax jumped 88pc to £26.2m, as the number of trades increased 88pc and the total value of those trades rose by 60pc.

CMC paid its owners a dividend of £15m in the first six months of the year.

The trading firm has invested heavily in a new mobile platform, and 48pc of trading activity now goes through that Next Generation product.

Moments of volatility in markets over the past year, such as the Swiss franc unpegging from the euro and the market turmoil in China, have helped CMC by encouraging more trading, although it cannot currently foresee any similar events taking place in the near future.