It’s just over a year since since TP Icap delighted its rivals with a profit warning and a spectacularly acrimonious boardroom bust-up in which its chief executive John Phizackerley was kicked out (Patrick Hosking writes). Since then, however, relative calm has returned to the interdealer broker, which earns its bread deep in the plumbing of financial markets — acting as matchmaker to investment banks wanting to make opposing bets and hedges in the arcane world of interest rates and currencies.
First-half figures yesterday showed underlying revenues and profits growing very modestly in relatively difficult market conditions. There were few market shocks in the first half to produce the volatility and surge in trading volumes that TP Icap loves. The US Federal Reserve was just too