A former banker and currency trader with Smurfit Paribas [1995-1998 (having joined the bank in 1989)], CEO Conor Foley co-founded WorldSpreads (formerly Share spread) in Dublin in 2000. It was the first company in Ireland to provide a spread betting service.
Originally WorldSpreads was focused on sports spread betting in the United Kingdon and Ireland through its SportsSpread brand. It started to acquire clients in both the United Kingdom and Ireland and at the end of 2005, the company began providing a financial spread betting online service in both Dublin and London under the brand name WorldSpreads. In January 2007 it secured approval from the FSA for WorldSpreads UK to extend its range of products to include foreign exchange and futures and options and in August 2007 WorldSpreads floated on AIM.
The WorldSpreads Group is today still headed by Chief Executive Conor Foley but is now based in London. Having sold the Irish based trading operations in a move designed to gear the Group's international growth strategy, the main trading desk as well as the settlement and support activities associated with all of the International Business for WorldSpreads are now also managed out of London.
In March 2010, WorldSpreads launched XEQT, the Group's new trading platform. In addition to its new Edinburgh office, WorldSpreads, which is listed on the Aim in London today (December 2010) has offices in Dublin, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur. It operates in 14 languages with 3rd party relationships in Greece, Hungary and Slovenia. As well as catering for people who want to trade shares, currency and bond markets, WorldSpreads is providing the infrastructure for a number of online betting sites. In fact, according to Mr Foley, about 45 per cent of the group's work is spent providing this type of service.
In the last quarter under review the number of bets had grown to 6,502 per day from 4,836 per day during the comparable period last year. In addition, during the year ended 31 March 2010, the number of new accounts opened at WorldSpreads was 4,124 (2009: 3,673), with 41 per cent of all trades and 31 per cent of trading profit was recorded from outside of the UK. To better get a perspective of the company's growth one only has to compare the figures for March 2007 when WorldSpreads UK executed an average of 1,952 bets per day compared to an average of 91 bets per day during March 2006.
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