Description
Interactive Brokers LLC (IB) is an American multinational brokerage firm. It operates the largest electronic trading platform in the U.S. by number of daily average revenue trades. The company brokers stocks, options, futures, EFPs, futures options, forex, bonds, and funds.
The company is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut and has offices in four cities. It is the largest subsidiary of the brokerage group Interactive Brokers Group, Inc., which was founded by Chairman Thomas Peterffy, an early innovator in computer-assisted trading. IB is regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the New York Stock Exchange, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, National Futures Association, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other self-regulatory organizations. The company is a provider of fully disclosed, omnibus, and non-disclosed broker accounts and provides correspondent clearing services to 200 introducing brokers worldwide. The company serves 607,000 client brokerage accounts, with US$128.4 billion in customer equity. Interactive Brokers Group owns 40 percent of the futures exchange OneChicago, and is an equity partner and founder of the Boston Options Exchange.
The original organization was first created as a market maker in 1977 under the name T.P. & Co., and was renamed Timber Hill Inc. in 1982. It became the first to use fair value pricing sheets on an exchange trading floor in 1979, and the first to use handheld computers for trading, in 1983. In 1987, Peterffy also created the first fully automated algorithmic trading system, to automatically create and submit orders to a market. Between 1993 and 1994, the corporate group Interactive Brokers Group was created, and the subsidiary Interactive Brokers LLC was created to control its electronic brokerage, and to keep it separate from Timber Hill, which conducts market making. In 2014, Interactive Brokers became the first online broker to offer direct access to IEX, a private forum for trading securities. Currently about 16.6 percent of the company is publicly held, while the remainder is held by employees and their affiliates; Thomas Peterffy is the largest shareholder.
