Virtu Financial (VIRT)

[Doubledown22]

Trading firm Virtu Financial plans to raise up to $100 million in IPO

NEW YORK Mon Mar 10, 2014 8:33pm EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/11/us-virtufinancial-ipo-idUSBREA2A01G20140311

Traders of Virtu Finalcial work at a newly renovated section of trading stations on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, November 13, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Chip East

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(Reuters) - Trading firm Virtu Financial Inc, which posted only one day of trading losses over the five years ended 2013, plans to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday.

Virtu said the IPO price was an estimate solely for the purpose of calculating the registration fee with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company, a market maker in equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities markets, intends to list Class A shares on Nasdaq under the symbol "VIRT." Virtu will have three other share classes.

Goldman Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan, Sandler O'Neill + Partners LP are the underwriters for the offering, among others.

Vincent Viola, Virtu's founder and executive chairman, will control more than a majority of the combined voting power of the company's common stock after the offering.

Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which acquired its stake in 2011, is the other major shareholder.

Last year the company paid out $433.4 million in cash distributions to members.


Virtu said as a result of its real-time risk management strategy and technology, the company had only one losing day of trading from the beginning of 2009 through the end of 2013, a total of 1,238 trading days.

Virtu reported a net income of $182.2 million on a revenue of $623.7 million last year, an increase from earnings of $87.6 million on $581.5 million in revenue in 2012.

Virtu employs a "market neutral" strategy in which it is not dependent on the direction of any particular market. The firm aims to lock in returns through "precise and nearly instantaneous hedging," the company said.

Virtu said it expected global electronic trading to continue to grow, after experiencing a compound annual rate of 13.7 percent over the past decade, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

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