CMC Markets CEO becomes Baron Cruddas of Shoreditch
CMC Markets CEO Peter Cruddas is one of London’s most important advocates who has dedicated his career to London’s capital markets economy
CMC Markets has announced that its Founder and CEO, Peter Cruddas, has been appointed as a Peer in the House of Lords.
Lord Cruddas founded CMC Markets in 1989 as “Currency Management Consultants” and grew the business rapidly, launching one of the world’s first on-line trading platforms in 1996.
The business developed into a global online trading business with offices all around the world. Today it is a FTSE 250 company with over £250m in Net Operating Income and 750 employees.
Lord Cruddas has had an active involvement in politics for many years following his role as Co-Treasurer to the Conservative Party from June 2011 until March 2012 and as a co-founder of Vote Leave the pro-Brexit campaign group.
Lord Cruddas founded the Peter Cruddas foundation in 2006 which aims to benefit disadvantaged and disengaged young people in society. Peter has personally given in excess of £16 million to the foundation, which has supported over 200 different charities including The Prince’s Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Magic Breakfast.
I am honoured to take my place in the House of Lords. I am extremely proud of our great country and I look forward to using my experience and knowledge to engage in meaningful debate and make a significant contribution to public life. -Lord Cruddaa
At the age of 15, Mr. Cruddas left Shoreditch Comprehensive School in Hackney, with no formal qualifications, and joined Western Union as a Telex operator.
After being made redundant, he ventured into the FX industry, working as a dealer in the FX trading rooms of various banks in the Square Mile, before joining the London operations of Jordan’s Petra Bank in 1989 as Head of FX Dealing.
Less than a year later, Mr. Cruddas founded CMC Markets, his very own company, with just £10,000, driving the company forward for 25 years to its current valuation of £1.2 billion.
In 2011, Mr. Cruddas was appointed Treasurer of the Conservative Party, working closely with Lord Fink, who has raised vast funds for the Conservative Party over the years, and is also active in the FX industry, being the venture capital investor in newly established FX prime brokerage ISPrime.
With regard to how CMC Markets is preparing its operations for the outcome of the EU referendum, Mr. Cruddas said last month that he refutes any notion that a ‘Brexit’ would jeopardize British jobs.
“We’re looking for staff. We’re not getting rid of staff so we wouldn’t be laying people off,” he said.
Mr. Cruddas noted that in the advent of the referendum, traders were still generating high volume, but the actual amounts being traded during the past few weeks have been lower than usual. He considers this to be a form of caution by traders, but believes that once the referendum is concluded, this will improve.
The company continues to invest substantial resources in home-grown technology, which is developed and supported on site in London. CMC Markets’ 133 Houndsditch premises are home to a $100 million proprietary trading system which is hosted in-house, with integral servers and a full support team dedicated to its functionality.
Peter Cruddas shows confidence in London by paying £42 million in cash for Victorian mansion
So great is Mr. Cruddas’ confidence in London as not only a business center for the world but as a city in which to purchase high value real estate, following the company’s recent public listing on London Stock Exchange’s main market.
After a very conservative initial public offering (IPO) by CMC Markets in February 2016, in which the company floated 31% of shares at a total of £218 million, the second time that the company has approached public listing with extreme caution after was it was dissuaded from going public in 2006 by advisers Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the latter of which took a 10% stake in the firm for $140 million in 2007. Post-IPO, Mr. Cruddas has retained majority control.
Just four years ago, he invested £42 million, which is a significant amount of his personal gain from the flotation of CMC Markets, in a seven-storey Victorian mansion in West London’s Mayfair district.
When purchasing the house, which had been previously owned by Iranian art dealer Nasser David Khalili, Mr. Cruddas would have been subject to a property tax (stamp duty) bill in excess of £5 million.
The home has been inhabited by like minded individuals in its earlier years, having been owned by Conservative Party peer The Ninth Earl of Coventry following its construction in 1890 by Scottish architect James Anthony Balfour.
Mr Cruddas has many times demonstrated his efforts toward absolute commitment to London’s capital markets over the years, and rightly deserves his peerage
