IG Group boss June Felix to leave in September for health reasons

IG Group has announced that its chief executive will step down next month due to ‘her health situation.’

June Felix, who has run the online trading platform for five years, has been on leave since early July for unspecified medical reasons.

IG has now told investors she will leave the business on 29 September, with finance boss Charlie Rozes continuing as acting chief executive while management consultancy Russell Reynolds searches for a replacement.

Departure: IG chief executive June Felix (pictured) has been on leave since early July for unspecified medical reasons. She will leave the business on 29 September

The FTSE 250 company has experienced exceptional growth since Felix, 66, took over in October 2018, when its trading was being impacted by tightening regulations on selling complex financial products to retail investors.

Following the pandemic, the firm saw a surge in first-time amateur traders looking to make some extra cash from heightened stock market volatility.

Amidst this frenzy, IG expanded its US operations with the $1billion acquisition of online brokerage Tastytrade, thereby giving it greater exposure to the country’s fast-growing retail options and futures market.

For the last financial year, the London-based business reported annual revenues of over £1billion for the first time despite rising economic uncertainty causing a decline in active client numbers.

Felix said: ‘It has been a great privilege to build and lead such a talented, ambitious group of people as the chief executive of IG Group for nearly five years.

‘It has been through everyone’s collective effort that we have built a stronger, more diverse company.’

Born in Pittsburgh, Felix started her career at Procter & Gamble before working for Johnson & Johnson and then moving into banking, with stints at Deutsche Bank, Citi and JP Morgan Chase.

She also ran IBM’s banking and financial markets division and was the European president of payment processing platform VeriFone.

Felix had been a non-executive director of IG for three years before becoming its chief executive, making her one of the few female leaders of an FTSE 350 firm. 

Mike McTighe, chairman of IG, said: ‘We thank her for the significant contribution she has made over the past eight years as a board member and especially as group chief executive for almost five years.

‘During her tenure as executive, the company has successfully pursued a strategy to diversify the business while at the same time strengthening its core OTC [over the counter] business, resulting in a doubling of the group’s revenue and profit over the period.’

IG Group shares were up 0.5 per cent, or 3.5p, at 670.5p on early Tuesday afternoon, meaning they have slumped by around 28 per cent over the past two years. 

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk