WORLDSPREADS GROUP, the listed financial markets trading company, has agreed a strategic alliance with Ladbrokes to provide its services to the bookmaker and gaming firm’s four million clients.
Under the partnership, WorldSpreads will link its phone and online financial spread trading service to Ladbrokes, allowing the latter’s customers to trade in shares, commodities, stock indices, currencies, bonds and interest rates.
It is the second international deal involving Irish betting and financial trading firms in recent months, following an alliance between Paddy Power and Pari Mutuel Urbain, one of France’s two state-controlled gambling companies.
Irish firm WorldSpreads, founded in 2000 and headed by Conor Foley, already offers a similar service to sports-betting company Victor Chandler. “This partnership is consistent with one of our long-term growth strategies, which is to form alliances with companies that have complementary client databases,” Mr Foley said in London yesterday.
Ladbrokes chief executive Christopher Bell said: “Spread betting is an increasingly popular choice for people wishing to bet on financial markets and we believe there is significant potential for a brand like [ours].”
The deal should deliver thousands of customers to WorldSpreads, though only a proportion of Ladbrokes’ active 800,000 internet clients are likely to be interested in trading, rather than simply betting.
Details of what WorldSpreads will pay for access to Ladbrokes’ clients have not been released. This might be calculated on the basis of the number of deals done by clients, or on a percentage of the clients’ profits – which would be cheaper for WorldSpreads.
Headquartered in Ireland, most of WorldSpreads’ 65 staff work from its City of London office. It sold its Irish trading operations last December in a management-led buyout.
