London Capital Group no longer for sale
Board withdraws LCG from offer period despite three preliminary approaches.
Online financial trading operator London Capital Group (LCG) has been withdrawn from its offer period, its board has announced to the London Stock Exchange.
In a statement issued yesterday, the board stressed it is “confident of its future as an independent company under its new chief executive, Mark Slade”, who succeeded Simon Denham after LCG’s decade-long chief executive resigned last month following a 27% drop in its revenues for the year ended 31 December 2012.
LCG had received three preliminary approaches from Cantor Fitzgerald Europe, City Index Limited and GAIN Capital Holdings, although the latter announced two weeks ago it had no intention of making a formal offer. The deadline for the other two offers was 5pm on 12 March and the announcement of the approaches had led to a 25% rise in LCG’s share price. At the time of writing, the share price is down 4%.
LCG chairman Giles Vardey admitted last month that 2012 was a “difficult” and “disappointing” year, which saw a £7m profit in 2011 become a £200,000 loss. In addition, the company’s COO Rachel Woodford will leave her role in July to pursue other interests, while chairman Richard Davey announced his resignation “as planned” in August last year.
In January, Gibraltar-licensed operator BetVictor agreed a deal which will see LCG provide it with a white label financial spread trading platform. The platform allows users to trade indices, FX, equities, bonds and commodities on the BetVictor Financials website.