Publishing its final results for 2020, interdealer broker TP ICAP revealed acquisition costs of £11 million during an unprecedented year. The document issued with the published results provided a progress update into the Group’s acquisition of investment network, Liquidnet, and its entire issued share capital of Liquidnet Holdings, Inc.
Despite the challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic, TP ICAP remained fully operational throughout the year — beginning to slowly execute new strategies and gaining shareholder approval of Liquidnet on 1st February 2021. TP ICAP hopes that this acquisition will work to accelerate the execution of new strategies where the pandemic had otherwise slowed down progress, as well as provide the firm with significant new growth opportunities.
Nicolas Breteau, CEO of TP ICAP, said:
We strengthened our financial position by redomiciling our Group’s holding company and embedding a new risk management framework. And we announced the acquisition of Liquidnet, an electronic buyside-focused trading platform that will accelerate our strategy and transform the Group’s growth trajectory.
The CEO also highlighted TP ICAP’s intention to complete its acquisition by the month’s end, realising a cutting-edge infrastructure powerhouse on a global market-scale, “with strong sell-side and buy-side networks, and leading franchises across all major asset classes,” he added.
Liquidnet’s electronic network integrates extensive buyside trade workflow connectivity and includes advanced incorporations with all execution management and major order management systems. Alongside its hopes to achieve new growth opportunities, TP ICAP also expects to take advantage of analytics and data assets expertise from both organisations in order to push non-transaction-related revenues.
The overall consideration for the acquisition is said to be between $575 million and $700 million. These numbers comprise cash of $525 million, which are subject to customary adjustments and payable upon completion. The cash figure has a deferred consideration of $50m and contingent deferred consideration of up to $125 million.
March 2020 saw the Group identifying three key strategic pillars to underpin its medium-term growth strategy — electronification, aggregation of liquidity and diversification of revenues. On 1st December 2020, TC ICAP held a Capital Markets Day at which senior management presented in lengthy detail exactly how the strategy would be executed across the Group and how it would potentially shape the outcome of final results this time next year after what is a hopefully less volatile 2021.
TP ICAP Group recently announced the appointment of Andrew Polydor as Head of Global Markets. The newly created position has Polydor overseeing the Group’s Global Broking division in addition to his role as head of TP ICAP’s Energy & Commodities division which he has held for the past 12 years.
