London Capital Group Goes It Alone - City Index Drops Interest in Acquisition

London Capital Group has announced that rival City Index has dropped its interest in acquiring the firm and that the company isn’t in any discussions “relating to the possibility of an offer being made for the company.” The broker stated that it is “confident in its future as an independent company under its new CEO Mark Slade.”

There ends the current saga of possible M&A activity for London Capital Group, as the news follows previous announcements that GAIN Capital and Cantor Fitzgerald (Europe) had dropped their interest. On the news, shares are down over 20% to 34.50p and is now only slightly above its 52 week low of 32.50p.

The question now is whether after looking at LCG financials and their brand strength is what apparent that a bid wasn’t worth it, or were stakeholders expecting too high of a payout to consummate a deal? Seeing FXCM’s stock price rally over the last few months while GAIN Capital continues to wallow around implies that we could be seeing a situation where investors are starting to make bets on who they believe will be the long term winners in the Forex industry.