Retail forex broker FXCM Inc (NASDAQ:FXCM) has announced that it has closed on its previously announced sale of the DailyFX.com Forex research website business to IG Group Holdings plc (LON:IGG) for a price of $40 million.
Cash of $36 million was paid by IG to FXCM on closing, with an additional $4 million to be paid on completion of certain migration requirements.
FXCM used the proceeds from the sale to repay debt owed to Leucadia. FXCM has made loan repayments of $154 million to Leucadia with $156 million outstanding.
Drew Niv, FXCM
FXCM CEO Drew Niv said:
With the close of this deal we have made another positive step towards completing our goal of eliminating the Leucadia debt through the sale of non-core assets and cash generated through operations.
The DailyFX websites currently support eight languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Chinese, with the client recruitment centered in related geographic regions. IG will take on 34 employees associated with DailyFX, as well as ownership of all of the assets associated with delivering the full service to current and potential clients, including journalistic and support staff, subscription lists, source code, all relevant domain names and all intellectual property rights.
For an agreed annual fee, FXCM will continue to advertise on the US site and will take ownership of any US and Canadian domiciled leads that this advertising generates. According to SimilarWeb data, DailyFX gets about 20% of its hits from US visitors and another 6% from Canada, so that is still a fairly big chunk of DailyFX’s business and value.
IG expects that running DailyFX will add around £5 million to annual operating costs.
Quayle Munro served as advisor to FXCM on the deal.