Historic stockbroker looks to Cantor for new lease of life
THERE was some concern in the markets a couple of weeks ago when it emerged that Cantor Fitzgerald was closing its corporate finance division in the UK. That is the part of the company that raises funds for clients and helps them do deals.
What would happen to the clients, particularly those needing to raise cash during the coronavirus crisis?
But it sounds like the company has found a buyer for the division.
Sources say WH Ireland, the historic British stockbroker listed on AIM, has sealed a deal to take on the business, including dozens of its clients. Both sides declined to comment. It would mean a raid by WH Ireland’s chief executive Phillip Wale on his former employer.
Wale ran Cantor’s fixed income business in Europe between 2016 and 2018, after which he left to join WH Ireland, the company founded in 1872 by William Henry Ireland after the foundation of Manchester’s stock exchange.
Wale will be hoping that the deal might breathe new life into WH Ireland’s share price, which has suffered since he took charge in August 2018.
But that won’t be any consolation for the 25 Cantor staff who will be made redundant.
AT THE other end of the spectrum, in terms of scale, the AIM’s army of followers will be tracking Sumo Group, the Sheffield-based computer games designer.
The firm, which is behind games such as Team Sonic Racing and Hitman 2, is due to release annual results on Tuesday.
As is often the case, the outlook will be a bigger driver of the share price in these volatile times than the results themselves.
Number-crunchers at Peel Hunt have trimmed their profit forecasts for this year by 15 per cent as Sumo deals with the fallout from coronavirus.
OVER on Wall Street, tech fans will be keeping an eye on shares in Snap Inc, the parent company of instant video messaging app Snapchat, which releases its first quarter results on Tuesday.
The company, led by founder Evan Spiegel, is expected to have seen a surge in user activity in the first three months of this year, as children in lockdown at home turn to their smartphones to keep in touch with friends.
But despite the inevitable increase in active user numbers, the big question is how advertising has held up, given that big businesses around the world are slashing their spending.