IMC Financial MarketsIMC Financial Markets posted record profits of €165 million over 2014. That’s 30% more than the previous year. Especially the last four months of 2014 have been very good, according to Rob Defares in FD (nl, paywall). The trading revenue was 17% higher with €474 million.

Sharp growth since 2009

An annual profit of €165 million is a lot. To put in in perspective, only a few years ago the profits were €28m (2008) and €26m (2009). Since 2009 the results have shown a structural growth. We still have to wait for Optiver to release their earnings, but it’s reasonable to expect Optiver to beat IMC and report a profit in excess of €200 million.

shrinking headcount

The profits go up, but the number of employees go down. On the other hand, IMC employs a lot of people compared with Virtu (151). Headcount was down from 619 to 581. The firm has bought Goldman Sach’s trading operations on the floor of NYSE – bringing in some dozen Goldman Sachs traders. This suggests a few more employees have been shown the door (apart from the obvious 38). Offices are in Sydney, Hongkong, Zug, Amsterdam, New York, Chicago and Shanghai.

IMC Financial Markets Average bonus €180k

The bonus percentage at trading firms like IMC is approximately 35%. When the total profit after tax is €165m, there’s probably a 15% corporate tax applied. With this information we can estimate the profit before bonus and taxes to be €300m. This suggests the bonus to be €105m, or per employee on average €180k on top of their salary. Nice.

However, the bonus pay out is usually very skewed at IMC. Most of the cookie jar will end up in the management ranks. As seen before in the Chicago details.

Happy Flow Traders

Flow Traders is preparing their IPO. This kind of results are helping them a lot selling the shares to investors. Not only the profitability, but also the sharp growth rate will get investors interested. IMC isn’t interested in going public. But if they would, it would be quite a price tag for the firm.

Freaking out

If you’re trying to land a job at a firm like IMC. A small piece of advice. For Andreas it has been too late, but if you’re freaking out because of an interview with an IMC recruiter : try yoga. Maybe Tim van der Vliet could help you. But posting this kind of questions on the internet isn’t going to help you. Maybe hard to believe, but really : those IMC recruiters have google as well.

Jack