Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The founders of the forex and CFD broker Plus500 (LON:PLUS) Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Ben-Izhak, Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann, have sold a combined 13% (15 500 000 shares) of the existing ordinary shares of the company, as per a Completion of Placing announcement on the website of the London Stock Exchange from September 29, 2016.
After the sale, the five company founders will still retain combined 25 432 547 shares, or 22.13% of the company.
The price, at which the shares were sold was 650p, or a total of £100.75 million ($131 million). The actual price at market close on September 28 was 750 p, close to the highest price in the past 52 weeks – 785p. Since the beginning of the year the price of the Plus500 shares has almost doubled.
The Placing is expected to settle on a T+5 basis on 6 October 2016, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain customary conditions. The Company is not a party to the Placing and will not receive any proceeds from the Placing.
It, however, is not announced who the buyers are.
Liberum Capital Limited (“Liberum”) and Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co KG (“Berenberg”) acted as joint global co-ordinators and joint bookrunners in connection with the Placing.
Plus500 offers trading in forex, options, contracts for difference (CFDs), commodities, indices, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It operates its own online trading platform for CFDs available in over 31 languages on desktop and Android, Windows and iOS mobile operating systems. According to Investment Trends report from July 2015, it is the second largest CFD provider in the UK.
Plus500 is licensed by three regulators – the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The broker operates in the European Economic Area (EU member states, plus Norway, Lichtenstein and Iceland), Gibraltar, Australia and certain other jurisdictions across Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Its subsidiaries include Plus500UK, Plus500AU, Plus500CY and Plus500IL.
Earlier this month Plus500 has released its H1 2016 report, boasting strong performance, record revenues and profit and a high numbers of active customers.
