The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) proposals for tighter restrictions on spread betting providers might be grabbing all the headlines at the moment, but IG Group (IGG) was already in the middle of a strategic shift to attract longer-term investors rather than short-term speculators. The spread betting specialist has decided to stop offering its Sprints binary product - which allows clients to take a position on whether an asset's value will go up or down at a specified point in time - to new clients, with immediate effect.
Net trading revenue increased by 14 per cent to £245m. In the second quarter, revenue was ahead more than a fifth year on year. This was helped by market volatility around the US election, which did not see the kind of drop-off in trading activity that followed the UK's "knife-edge" EU membership vote, according to chief executive Peter Hetherington.