Icap Electronic dreams

Michael Spencer would like investors to value Icap like a bit like a stock exchange. It’s not hard to see why. The stock market values exchanges on sky-high multiples. The London Stock Exchange, admittedly a bid target, trades on 27 times consensus 2007 earnings. That’s nearly twice Icap’s 19 times multiple. And there is an argument for giving Icap an exchange-style multiple. Although it is described as a brokerage business, it is building its own global electronic platform for over-the-counter...