The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
IG Group Holdings plc is a London headquartered online trading provider best known for spread betting and CFD (contract for difference) trading, which lets clients speculate on the price movement of currencies, indices, commodities and shares without owning the underlying asset. Beyond the core IG platform, the group now offers direct stock and ETF investing, US listed options and futures trading, and cryptocurrency exchange services through separate group brands. It operates in 19 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and North America and serves more than 1.3 million customers worldwide. IG describes itself as the world's number one CFD provider and holds licenses from ten regulators, including the FCA in the UK, ASIC in Australia, MAS in Singapore, FINMA in Switzerland, BaFin in Germany, the JFSA in Japan and the CFTC/NFA in the US, broader jurisdictional coverage than most brokers in its category. Rather than build every adjacent product in house, the group has expanded mainly by acquiring specialists and keeping them under their own brand: US options and futures trading through tastytrade, UK commission free stock investing through Freetrade, and a crypto exchange through Independent Reserve, alongside the original leveraged trading business. The company was founded in 1974 by financier Stuart Wheeler with 30,000 pounds from six friends, trading as IG Index, the world's first spread betting firm; it let UK investors bet on the price of gold at a time when exchange controls restricted buying the metal outright. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in July 2000, the first spread betting company to go public, and is now a constituent of the FTSE 100 under the ticker IGG. Breon Corcoran, previously chief executive of Betfair, Paddy Power Betfair and Zepz, has led the group as CEO since January 2024. IG completed a 1 billion dollar acquisition of the US brokerage tastytrade in June 2021, bought the UK trading app Freetrade for 160 million pounds in a deal completed April 2025, and took a 70 percent stake in the Australian crypto exchange Independent Reserve in a deal that closed in early 2026. For the calendar year ended 31 December 2025, the group reported record total revenue of 1.123 billion pounds, up 7 percent on the prior year. In the quarter to 31 March 2026, total assets under administration across IG's platforms reached 19.3 billion pounds, up 57 percent on a reported basis, with first trade volumes up sharply following the Freetrade and Independent Reserve deals; total revenue for that quarter was 331.2 million pounds, up 19 percent year on year.
