British multinational asset management company Schroders plc (LON:SDR) has sold a small proportion of its shares in interdealer broker ICAP plc (LON:IAP), as reported by a filing with the London Stock Exchange on May 7.
According to the filing, Schroders PLC took its shareholding down from 15% to 14.9% which appears to be minimal, however it involved the sale of 3.4 million shares.
Prior to this transaction, which took place on May 6, 2015, Schroders PLC held 103,260,578 ordinary shares in ICAP, which has now been slightly reduced to 99,802,990 ordinary shares.
This particular transaction comprises seven call options which can be converted, the full details of which are listed here:
Shares in ICAP rose 15p on Friday to 562.5p per share, closing 2.74% up, despite a 15% decline in average daily FX volumes experienced by the firm’s institutional electronic brokerage division EBS in April this year.
Bearing in mind the victory by the Conservative Party in the UK General Election at the end of last week, confidence should be restored in ICAP’s longevity among London’s financial giants, as Chairman Michael Spencer had indicated that the firm may relocate its head offices to North America had the socialist Labour Party won the election, its anti-business ethos being highly unattractive to British businesses, however with David Cameron’s Conservative Party now firmly in place for another five years, confidence is likely to remain high for the prosperity of London’s electronic trading giants for the immediate future.
Chart courtesy of Google Finance.
For the official announcement from ICAP, click here.