Plus500
|
World's Trading Machine | |
| Public | |
| Traded as | LSE: PLUS |
| Industry | Online trading |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder |
|
Number of locations | 6 |
Key people | |
| Products | CFD |
| Services | Online trading platform |
| Revenue |
 US$ 275.6million (FY, 2015)[1] |
|
US$ $127.9 million (2015)[1] | |
| Website |
plus500 |
Plus500 is a company providing online trading services to retail customers. The company was founded in 2008 and provides trading in CFDs on a range of financial markets.[2] The company's main operations are based in Israel, with regulated entities in the UK, Cyprus and Australia, and additional operations in Bulgaria. Shares of the parent company, Plus500 Ltd, are listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.[3]
History
The company was founded by six alumni of the Technion Institute of Technology (Gal Haber, Alon Gonen, Elad Ben-Izhak, Shlomi Weizmann, Omer Elazari and Shimon Sofer), with an initial investment of $400,000 contributed by Gonen, the managing director of the company.[2]
In 2013, the company announced an Initial public offering on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Its shares started publicly trading on 22 July 2013, raising up to US$75 million, which put the company's Market capitalization to US$ 200million.[4]
In early June 2015, Plus500 agreed to a $703 million bid from Playtech, an online gambling company that was expanding into trading.[5] However, Playtech walked away from the deal in November 2015 after it failed to get regulatory approval for the takeover.[6]
Operations
The company is registered and located in Israel with offices in the UK, Cyprus and Australia. The service was initially a PC-based trading system. In 2010, the company rolled out its browser version for Mac OS and Linux users.[7] In 2011, they launched their first app for iPad and iPhone users and during the following year they launched the Android app and In 2014 the company launched its Windows app.
It has been reported that 40% of the transactions were made by either Smartphones or tablets.[2]
Controversy
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined Plus500UK Limited £205,128 for failing to provide accurate and timely transaction reports to the FSA in respect of all the reportable transactions they carried out.[8]
In May 2015, Plus500 was hit with massive value loss when its stock plunged almost 60 percent due to the company's move to freeze 55 percent of its UK based trader accounts. The UK Financial Conduct Authority had ordered Plus500UK (the UK subsidiary of Plus500) to freeze the accounts as part of a review into anti-money-laundering controls. Most customers were able to access their funds within 2 months. The Australian and the Cyprus subsidiaries were not affected.[9]
Number of tradable instruments
Plus500 is one of the first CFD brokers that brought a wide range of trading instruments to retail clients. Depending on country, you can trade up to 2.000 CFD instruments in Plus500. Those include US and UK stocks, commodities, exotic forex pairs, ETFs, national indices and some crypto currencies like Bitcoin.
Affiliates
The company runs an affiliate program called 500Affiliates to refer new traders by website owners and other internet marketers. The program mostly gained such high popularity due to 25 EUR practice account on constant offer. The program has over 70,000 registered affiliates worldwide, operating in 29 languages. It has been named one of the most profitable affiliate programs by some trading news sites.
Regulation
Plus500 Ltd licences their CFD Trading Platform as the Plus500 brand. Plus500 Ltd operates its CFD business through its subsidiaries: Plus500UK Ltd. which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), FRN 509909; Plus500AU Pty Ltd AFSL #417727 issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, (ASIC) and Plus500CY Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC)[10] SEC registration number 250/14.
References
- 1 2 Plus500. "Finance Report 2015". Retrieved 17 February 2016.
- 1 2 3 globes. "Plus500: Absolutely Israeli".
- ↑ StockMarketWire. "Plus500 H1 pretax profit rises to $20.5m". Retrieved 27 August 2013.
- ↑ Leap Rate. "Plus500 IPO successful – company raises $25M, shareholders sell $50M". Retrieved 2 September 2013.
- ↑ Partington, Richard (1 June 2015). "Playtech Pays £460 Million for U.K. Trading Platform Plus500". Bloomberg.
- ↑ "Playtech folds on Plus500 deal after regulatory concerns". Financial Times. November 23, 2015.
- ↑ Haartez. "Plus500 raises $75m in London stock offering".
- ↑ "fca.org.uk"
- ↑ http://www.businessinsider.com/israeli-spreadbetting-firm-plus500s-stock-is-bombing-after-freezing-accounts-money-laundering-2015-5
- ↑ "Plus500 receives CySEC License". Retrieved 22 October 2014.