Plus500 is a company providing online trading services to retail customers. The company was founded in 2008 and provides trading in CFDs on a range of financial markets. The company's main operations are based in Israel, with regulated entities in the UK, Cyprus and Australia, and additional operations in Bulgaria. Shares of the parent company, Plus500 Ltd, are listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
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History
The company was founded by six alumni of the Technion Institute of Technology (Gal Haber, Alon Gonen, Elad Ben-Izhak, Shlomi Weizmann, Omer Elazari and Shimon Sofer), with an initial investment of $400,000 contributed by Gonen, the managing director of the company.
In 2013, the company announced an Initial public offering on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Its shares started publicly trading on 22 July 2013, raising up to US$75 million, which put the company's Market capitalization to US$ 200million.
In early June 2015, Plus500 agreed to a $703 million bid from Playtech, an online gambling company that was expanding into trading. However, Playtech walked away from the deal in November 2015 after it failed to get regulatory approval for the takeover.
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Operations
The company is registered and located in Israel with offices in the UK, Cyprus and Australia. The company's operational division is mainly located in Bulgaria.
The Plus500 platform was initially a PC-based trading system. In 2010, the company rolled out its browser version for macOS and Linux users. In 2011, they launched their first app for iPad and iPhone users and during the following year they launched the Android app and In 2014 the company launched its Windows app.
It has been reported that 40% of the transactions were made by either Smartphones or tablets.
Controversy
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined Plus500UK Limited £205,128 for failing to provide accurate and timely transaction reports to the FSA in respect of all the reportable transactions they carried out.
In May 2015, Plus500 was hit with massive value loss when its stock plunged almost 60 percent due to the company's move to freeze 55 percent of its UK based trader accounts. The UK Financial Conduct Authority had ordered Plus500UK (the UK subsidiary of Plus500) to freeze the accounts as part of a review into anti-money-laundering controls. Most customers were able to access their funds within 2 months. The Australian and the Cyprus subsidiaries were not affected.
Many see the appointment of the compliance director, Penelope Judd to chairwoman as a positive development for the broker. She will replace current chairman Alastair Gordon.
Number of Tradable Instruments
Plus500 is one of the first CFD brokers that brought a wide range of trading instruments to retail clients. Depending on country, you can trade up to 2.000 CFD instruments in Plus500. Those include Stocks, Commodities, Indices, Forex pairs, ETFs, Options and Virtual Currencies.
Affiliates
The company runs an affiliate program called 500Affiliates to refer new traders from authorised websites. The program has more than 100,000 registered affiliates worldwide, operating in 32 languages. 500Affiliates offers one of the highest CPAs in the market and it has been named one of the most profitable and reliable affiliate programs by well known trading oriented websites.
Regulation
Plus500 Ltd licences their CFD Trading Platform as the Plus500 brand. Plus500 Ltd operates its CFD business through its subsidiaries: Plus500UK Ltd. which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), FRN 509909; Plus500AU Pty Ltd AFSL #417727 issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, (ASIC), Plus500CY Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) SEC registration number 250/14 and Plus500IL Ltd. which is authorised and regulated by the Israel Securities Authority. In addition, Plus500AU Pty Ltd is authorised to provide its services by the FMA in New Zealand (FSP No. 486026) and the FSB in South Africa (#47546).
Sponsorships
In January 2015, Plus500 signed a sponsorship deal with Atlético de Madrid Football Club. Later that year, Plus500 became their main sponsor for the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 seasons. The contract was renewed in January of 2017, so that Plus500 will continue to be Atlético de Madrid's main sponsor for the 2017/2018 season
Plus500 is also the sponsor and naming rights partner of the Brumbies Rugby team for the 2017 season.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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