Flying start for IG Index re-float

SPREAD-BETTING firm IG Index got its re-flotation away today, valuing the company at £393m, a 175% mark-up and substantial profit on the price its venture capital owner CVC paid for it just 20 months ago.

IG is coming back to the market at a price of 120p, at the lower end of the 112p-to-139p range at which broker UBS had been trying to sell the new issue.

Chief executive Nat Le Roux, whose own stake in the firm is valued at £28m, proclaimed the float a success even if it was some 10p down on the 130p the firm was at the weekend insisting would be achieved.

'The indicative prices were issued a couple of weeks ago and since then the index [the FTSE 100] has fallen 200 points,' he said.

Le Roux, who has cashed in £7m of shares and is retaining a stake of £21m, rebuffed claims in the City that IG's venture capital backers were guilty of a profiteering quick-flip. 'Any suggestion that investors are being mugged is preposterous,' he said.

IG is currently growing at around 50% a year, fuelled by an increase in the core financial spread-betting business. This has been transformed by customers migrating to the internet from the phone, as well as the growth in its Australian business and in binary betting, in which leisure punters restrict the upside and downside in their spread bets.

The offer was twice subscribed, IG said. Rival firm Cantor Index is predicting IG shares will end the day at around 126½p.