fees could any raise so much. IB is a 'discount' brokerage. as soon as they stop being the cheapest. another broker is going to sweep in and steal that business.
The proceeds from the offering will go toward buying a 5% equity interest in IBG Holdings, the privately held company that currently owns Interactive Brokers. News came a a bit of a shock actually. Fear of Refcoism I imagine, though the chance of that is quite minimal. The dangers of knee jerk linear thinking. What exactly are they selling here, the whole group or just the retail brokerage?
Link to the registration statement: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1381197/000104746906014485/a2174744zs-1.htm
"Our high degree of automation enables us to process approximately 500,000 trades per day with approximately 500 employees. During 2005 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2006, we generated pretax income in each period at a rate of more than $1 million per employee. Publicly available data regarding other companies in the securities and commodities industry indicate that this level of productivity is unparalleled for our industry. Automation has allowed us to become one of the lowest cost providers of broker-dealer services and to increase significantly the volume of trades we handle. According to data compiled by the Futures Industry Association (FIA) based on data received from exchanges worldwide, during the nine months ended September 30, 2006, we accounted for approximately 16.0% of exchange-listed equity options volume traded worldwide and approximately 18.8% of exchange-listed equity options volume traded on those markets in which we actively trade. We were the number one or number two liquidity provider on each of the three largest U.S. options exchanges (the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the International Securities Exchange and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange) during the nine months ended September 30, 2006, according to rankings provided by these exchanges."