Punchestown Festival : IG Index are back on the stock market.

Byline: Howard Wright

IG GROUP, the UK's biggest spreadbetting company, returned to the stock market yesterday with a valuation of pounds 393 million, less than two years after being delisted following a pounds 143 million management buyout, writes Howard Wright. Shares were issued at 120p, towards the lower end of the indicative range of 112p-139p, but IG chief executive Nat Le Roux was not disappointed.

He said: ``The FTSE 250, into which we will fit, was three per cent down on Wednesday, so we have to be pleased to have got away at 120p.''

Le Roux and his senior colleagues will be comfortably rewarded for their participation in the MBO. He explained that the placing had achieved two of the group's ambitions at a stroke.

``The delisting came about largely because of our founder Stuart Wheeler's need to raise finance and we said throughout that our ambition was to regain our listing and be debt free. We have done both today.

``Clearing our balance sheet gives confidence to our high-end financial clients and means we can make acquisitions if we wish. Watch this space.''

Le Roux added that his next priorities were to grow the company's overseas business and to promote its binary betting product, which took IG into fixed-odds products for the first time.

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Title Annotation:	Sports
Publication:	The Racing Post (London, England)
Date:	Apr 29, 2005
Words:	215
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