IG FY profit up 25%

Spreadbetting specialist IG Group has unveiled a 25% year on year growth in pre-tax profit to £157m, from £125.9m, driven by an increase in market volatility towards the end of the year. Revenue was also up 16% to £298m, from £257.1m.

Account opening was the main driver of growth across all the company’s offices in UK, Europe, Japan and Australia, being particularly strong in the fourth quarter, with 21,500 financial accounts being opened in the three months to 31 May 2010, compared to 18,750 for the comparable period the previous year.

The star regional performer was the group’s Australian office, where revenue grew 65% on a quarter-on-quarter basis to £46m, from £27.9m.

The group’s core UK business turned in a solid performance, growing revenue 8% year-on-year to £162m for the year ended 31 May 2010, from £150.6m.

Revenue from IG’s Japanese office during the full-year period was £24m, compared to £27.9m for the 8 months of the prior year during which the business was owned by IG. As previously reported, the first of a number of regulatory restrictions on leverage in the Japanese retail forex market comes into force in Japan on 1 August 2010.

IG also announced in the update this morning that it was in discussions with a number of brokers with a view to their offering direct access to the group’s US-based Nadex exchange to its clients, following April’s change of regulatory designation. Work needed to connect certain third party trading platforms to Nadex was however at an early stage, with it being likely to be some months “before these arrangements come to fruition”, said the company.