Optiver’s chief Jelle Elzinga made a phonecall to the journalists from Financieele Dagblad. Even before releasing the official figures on the firm’s results on 2010 – he was happy to share the information with them. That’s new. Trading firms dialing the journalist phone number, instead of other way around. Jelle was in my voicemail too, but he forgot to call Quote.
The good news is Optiver is doing fine again after a troubled 2009 with basically zero profit. Didn’t come as a surprise though. Company earned 75 million, 69 million more than 2009. That’s a tenfold improvement, but still incomparable with earlier years (228m in ’08, 179m in ’07 and 96 m in ’06). The headcount was down 10% to 580 and the rest of the interview is marketing. Unknown which activity in which market has been most profitable. The CFTC will be cheerful Optiver will be more than able to pay the fine.
For a better picture , here’s a 3 year overview of results compared with IMC. It’s clear 2009 was an anomaly with IMC beating Optiver. Everything is back to normal again.
When it comes to the number of traders and other employees, IMC is still the winning firm:
Of course, the most interesting thing for the company is the contribution to the net profit per employee. The average contribution per employee to the net income would also be worth mentioning – but let’s save it for a rainy day.
