Exclusive: Head of Dealing Matt Brief makes £54K profit spreadbetting IG shares
FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned via regulatory filings that longtime IG Group Head of Dealing Matt Brief has made a nice profit from a six-week spread bet in shares of his own employer.
Mr. Brief, who has headed the dealing room at IG since 2001 (making him one of the longest tenured members of IG senior management), and also holds the title Chief Product Officer at IG, went long on a spread bet equivalent to 50,000 LON:IGG shares on August 7. The spreadbet was entered into at an effective purchase price of £7.35783 per IG share, for a total outlay of £367,891.50 (or about USD $468,000).
We would note that it is perfectly legal for company executives to trade (or, spread bet) in shares of their own company. The trades just need to be made in a window of time after the company reports its results, and cannot be made during a certain “blackout” amount of time before results are announced.
IG shares had taken a dive in late July after the company reported full year 2020 (May 31 fiscal year-end) results. The results included record six-month-period revenues and profits for IG – but apparently a less than stellar outlook for FY-2021 disappointed the market, sending IG shares down 11%. Soon after that IG Group Chairman Mike McTighe and CEO June Felix each scooped up some IG shares for their own accounts, as was also exclusively reported by FNG.
Soon after Mr. Brief made his spread bet IG shares moved up by about 6% in just a few days, following financial reports from IG rivals Plus500 and Swissquote, each of which posted record results which caused their respective shares to pop in the aftermath.
And last week, after releasing a trading update for fiscal Q1-2021 (i.e. June-July-August 2020), IG shares rose again after the company disclosed net trading revenue of £209 million for the quarter – IG’s second best ever quarter, at least on the top line. The next day (September 18) Mr. Brief exited his trade at an effective price of £8.446 per share, for a total profit of £54,408 (USD $69,000).
Profits from spread betting are not subject to capital gains tax in the UK.