In a statement before its annual general meeting this week, Tullett Prebon’s chairman, Keith Hamill, warned that the dollar’s weakness would reduce the growth rate of the company’s revenues. However, the mild profit warning was countered by a relatively upbeat statement about the company’s wider embrace of electrnic broking.
“Our objectives for the next few years are to grow revenue and to develop TradeBlade, our electronic trading platform,” said Hamill. “The investments being made in revenue growth are already producing encouraging results, although we expect the impact to start to show in the second half and into 2008. We anticipate investing approximately £15 million in TradeBlade in the current year – all of which will be charged in the income statement. TradeBlade successfully launched its FX options product in May.”
Now just because I was unaware that Tullett had started to broke options electronically, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a soft launch. However, I’m told by a senior mucker from the options market that it very much was. He says that Tullett got a group of market makers together for a few sherbets and sarnies in a bistro bar near its Liverpool Street offices to launch the platform.