IG INDEX LTD

The new and exciting concept of spread betting, compared with traditional commodity trading, quickly became apparent. Since those early days in the mid-1970s financial spread betting has grown exponentially, particularly in the last decade, offering traders and investors a unique combination of flexibility, speed of execution and tax-free* profits.

IG Index expanded rapidly throughout the 1990s. In 1995 IG Index extended its spread betting offering to include individual publicly traded shares; a first in the UK.

Then, in 1998, IG Index launched an online dealing platform specifically designed for financial spread betting; another first in the UK.

The company continued to expand, widening its operations to include foreign exchange dealing, Contracts for Difference (CFD) and sports spread betting, under the IG Group banner.

IG Index is part of IG Group Holdings plc, a UK company listed on the London Stock Exchange, and a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The Group is headquartered in London while the IG Group also has offices in America, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Luxembourg.

The IG Group has over 120, 000 clients worldwide, making more than five million transactions per month. In the year to May 2010, the Group achieved a turnover of £298.6m (up 16.1%), and generated a record profit before tax of £157.6m (up 25%). The Group's financial businesses saw account openings increase by 9.2%, with over 90% of all client trades are conducted online via our PureDeal dealing platform.