IFX on recovery trail after dollar blow

IT WAS a Thursday the new chief executive of IFX will never forget. On 19 February, a 4% upswing in the value of the dollar wiped £1.5m off the spread betting and trading company's position in just a few hours.

Edmond Warner, who had already been struggling to turn the flagging business around, realised he had to issue a profits warning and make some major changes to the company's appetite for risk.

Within weeks, new management had been brought in with the brief to cut down IFX's proprietary trading activities and focus it on being a high-volume broker.

Thanks mainly to that February day, underlying profits for the year to 31 March were £800,000 against £2.9m a year earlier.

Warner was already carrying out a restructuring of the business, including getting rid of most of the management team. That, and the cost of relaunches of its Finspreads and other products meant the group racked up losses of £2.6m in the year.

However, Warner was today confident that the signs were good for 2004, with a near-24% jump in the number of active users of the Finspreads service. He is upping the dividend to 0.75p from 0.5p a year earlier.

Meanwhile, IFX has launched a contract for difference product that directly reflects the value of onshore hedge funds. Designed so that smaller players can back hedge funds without going investing in offshore products, Warner hopes it will be a moneyspinner in future years.