Spread Betting Provider ODL Markets Acquired by FXCM

Emergent UK based foreign exchange and derivatives broker ODL Group Ltd announced this morning that it has agreed to be acquired by USA based rival FXCM. ODL Group, which also offers spread betting and CFD trading products is thought to be one of the UK’s largest retail foreign exchange brokers.

The deal will see ODL Group’s biggest shareholders, Graham Wellesley and Lorenzo Naldini selling the business in which they own more than 50% of the equity to USA-based forex exchange brokerage heavyweight FXCM Holdings to create a business with over 200,000 active trading accounts and some 1000 employees worldwide.

Mr Wellesley, ODL Group’s vice chairman whose line of ancestry is also connected to the Duke of Wellington, stated that the takeover was just the start of an ‘aggressive’ roll-out plan for the company in which he and Lorenzo Naldini will stay as partners with responsibility for managing the European divisions.

The new company is looking into becoming one of the top CFDs, forex and spread betting providers in the United Kingdom and a strong competitor to rival counterparts CMC Markets, IG Index and City Index. ‘We believe the takeover will enable us to build a globalised version of their business’, Mr Wellesley said.

Drew Niv, a co-founder of FXCM and the company’s CEO, stated: ‘For several years, FXCM has been working towards becoming a major provider in Europe. The deal with ODL will provide us with a great opportunity to achieve this.’

ODL Markets and FXCM both run on the Metatrader 4 trading platform and although there will be no immediate changes to ODL Markets’ spread betting platform, it is envisaged that ODL Markets will be looking to replace their current spread betting platform with FXCM’s Trading Station. As a commentator rightly pointed out FXCM has been in the process of expanding throughout Europe over the past couple of years opening offices in Paris, Milan, Athens, and most recently Berlin. With the acquisition of ODL, this expansion process will be accelerated.

No financial information regarding the structure of the deal has been disclosed by FXCM or ODL but FXCM is estimated to be worth about $1.5bn (£984m). ODL shareholders will get FXCM shares in exchange for their current equity but are still likely to constitute a sizeable minor portion in the newly-combined business.

Tags: CFDs, fxcm, ODL Markets, spread betting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.