Plus500 Limited (LON:PLUS), one of the largest retail Forex & CFD brokers in the world, announced today the company founders (Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Ben-Izhak, Omer Elazari, Shlomi Weizmann) will be selling up to 15.5 million existing shares of the firm to qualified investors.
According to the press release, the sale represents about 13% of the firm’s share capital. The new offering (Placing Shares) is currently valued at £116.25 (£7.5 per share at current rates).
The general public is not eligible to participate in the Placing Shares as the deal will be mediated via an “accelerated bookbuild” exclusively to institutional investors.
Berenberg, Gossler & Co KG, a Hamburg-based multinational investment banking firm, and Liberum Capital Limited, a British investment banking & research company, will be overseeing the legal and financial particulars of the deal, with the final amount of shares and closing of the bookbuilding process to be determined by both firms and the founders.
Plus500 itself will not be compensated in any way from this offering. The LSE filing clarified that the owners of the firm will still hold about 22% of the total shares of the brokerage.
As part of the deal, the owners have agreed to not sell any additional shares for a period for 90 days after the completion of the current offering.
The Plus500 group was formed in 2008 and is currently the second best CFD broker in the United Kingdom, behind IG. According to the firm’s annual financial statement for 2015, Plus500 Limited posted a 20% increase in revenue to $275.6 million, with a net profit of $96.6 million and earnings per share at $0.84.
