Comdirect sold for £16.5m
COMDIRECT, Britain's second-biggest online stockbroker, has been sold for £16.5m by its similarly-named German parent.
The sale of the UK business ends the company's costly and loss-making excursions into European countries such as France, Italy and Spain started at the height of the stock market boom several years ago.
The buyers are Lloyds TSB Development Capital which will own just over 40%, comdirect's UK management with just over 30% and Numis Corporation, the institutional stockbroker. Comdirect has some 60,000 retail customers and handles an average of 2000 deals a day.
Comdirect, controlled by Germany's third-largest bank Commerzbank AG, also said it would book a pre-tax profit of e2.4m (£1.7m) this year as a result of the transaction.
Consolidation has gathered pace in the industry in recent years with larger players becoming more dominant.
Barclays Stockbrokers, the UK's largest retail stockbroker, took over Charles Schwab Europe last year to create the leading market player in UK retail broking with 500,000 clients.
