Okay, this is what I'm talking about. Could you point me to, say, a webpage on IB's site that explains min. acct. req.s, etc.
If he was one of their large account clients with a long history...they would have already discussed such with him even if he wasn't interested.
IB doesn't do it. I only know of 3-4 places that do. They are very large FCMs It's relationship driven. Not formulaic. An example would be $5M account and 3-4 year history (with them) with no major risk issues, paying $500k+/year in clearing fees then you could bring it up and start working through the approval process. They might lend you $20M but hold you to their VAR model limits. This is really one of the last steps. It's almost easier to get an ISDA. Think of IB as step 1, monthly profitability as step 2 and margin financing as step 10. There are many thinks you need to do sequentially before getting there.
It may be helpful to recall that a futures contract is not an asset like a stock, but rather is a contingent liability. As such, the margin required to open and hold a futures contract is generally referred to as a "performance bond" as it's intended to secure payment of the cash variation due the counterparty should you suffer an adverse price change. While brokers are allowed to lend money to a client to finance the purchase of a stock (i.e., the margin requirement), I am aware of no exchange that allows brokers to lend the performance bond required on an exchange listed futures contract, regardless of the client's creditworthiness. Finally, while a long option having a futures contract as its underlying is an asset (a short option would be another form of contingent liability), exchange rules generally require that option purchases be paid for in full as they are considered wasting assets. Some exchange margin rules, however, do effectively allow the market value of fully paid long options to offset the risk margin requirement associated with other options and futures contracts through the SPAN margin methodology.
And I know of no large trading company that does not use margin financing for exchange listed futures. How else could you hold large cross exchange positions that don't give any SPAN offset?