ISPrime goes from strength to strength as London’s finest forges ahead with £9 million annual profit
In the rarefied prime of prime brokerage sector, it is remarkable that ISPrime has increased its year on year profit by 900% in 2017, and has the credientials at the upper echelons of the prime brokerage sector that often denote its 30 year established rivals. We take a close look
The prime of prime brokerage sector is a very protracted business these days.
FinanceFeeds, during several meetings with many senior institutional FX industry figures during the past few months has shared the opinion from within the boardrooms of the liquidity distribution sector that it is possible to count the number of genuine prime of prime brokerages on one hand, most of which are long established and extremely well ordered bastions of institutional financial sector prowess.
It is, therefore, extremely rare to experience an entry to the OTC derivatives sector by a newly established prime of prime brokerage, with genuine relationships with Tier 1 banks that can distribute live and accurate aggregated prices to retail brokerages.
The plethora of recent entrants to emerging markets which have used the ‘prime’ terminology are, in most cases, not real prime of prime entities, as detailed by FinanceFeeds research in many jurisdictions, an example of which can be read here.
One such exception is ISPrime, which was established in 2014 by institutional FX stalwarts Jonathan Brewer and Raj Sitlani, in conjunction with Lord Stanley Fink’s ISAM hedge fund, in the heartlands of the institutional FX industry, London.
Today, Today, the firm which began trading in March 2015, has declared a profit of £8,956,324, which is quite considerable, when bearing in mind that its profit for the previous year ending March 2016 was less than one million pounds, standing at £994,000.
This represents a 900% increase in operating profit, in a very rarified sector of the OTC derivatives industry in which counterparty credit agreements are scarce and competition is established.
The company’s turnover for the year ending March 31, 2017 was £16, 647,992, which is a massive increment over the previous year’s £5,968,593 and the firm grew its assets from £2,403,886 last year to £9,754,319 for the year ending March 31, 2017.
As part of FinanceFeeds’ detailed introspective into the operational methodologies of London’s highly sophisticated prime of prime brokerage sector, during the following weeks, a full documentary from within ISPrime will be broadcast, outlining every aspect that should be considered when taking liquidity as an OTC derivatives market participant.
Speaking today with regard to the commercial success of ISPrime, Jonathan Brewer, Managing Partner at IS Prime commented “We are very proud of this fantastic achievement which we believe cements our position as a global market leader in the Prime of Prime industry. When you look at our financial results in comparison to our peers, I believe we are the fastest growing Prime of Prime and an increasingly dominant and respected participant.
“We have now paid back the £3 million loan for the initial seed capital to our major shareholder, International Standard Asset Management (ISAM), and have cleared all outstanding debt” he continued.
IS Prime considers its growth to have been organic, largely driven by a significant increase in volumes as a result of growing their client base. The company has been particularly successful in attracting new clients in Australia and Europe and anticipate future growth in Asia following the launch of the Hong Kong office earlier this year.
Raj Sitlani, Managing Partner at IS Prime adds, “IS Prime began trading in 2015 and for the first two year of the business, Jonathan and I focused on establishing the organisation and developing our offering. Our financial results for Year End 31 March 2017 reflect our first full year as a mature business and we have exceeded all our growth targets whilst also achieving nearly 100% client retention over the last three years. We have a very talented team, an unrivalled breadth of service offering and exceptional quant and technological resources – and I believe these factors really set us apart from our competitors in the industry.”
“Moving forward, we have ambitious plans for the business and are continuing to grow at a significant rate. IS Prime is already exceeding last year’s growth for Q1 and we are confident of double digit growth over the course of the year” concluded Mr Sitlani.
