LONDON – BGC Partners said on Monday that it had agreed to acquire the British assets of the brokerage firm RP Martin Group for an undisclosed amount. RP Martin was fined in the Libor investigation.
BGC, which is based in New York and headed by Howard W. Lutnick, the chairman and chief executive of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, said it also expected to acquire other assets and businesses of RP Martin in Sweden and the Netherlands next year, subject to regulatory approval and other conditions.
“We are pleased to announce this agreement with RP Martin, one of the oldest money brokers in the U.K.,” Shaun D. Lynn, the president of BGC Partners, said in a news release. “We expect it to bolster our European business by taking us into new geographies and complementing and strengthening our existing rates and foreign exchange platforms in the U.K. and Europe.”
RP Martin, which is based in London, is a small brokerage firm that specializes in products tied to European interest rates, as well as bonds, foreign currency and financial derivatives trading. It has about 170 brokers in Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden.
The British business being acquired posted unaudited revenue of more than $50 million in the fiscal year ended in September, according to BGC.
The deal comes just seven months after RP Martin was fined more than $2 million by regulators in Britain and the United States over misconduct related to the manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, a global benchmark rate, as it was tied to the Japanese yen.
Two former RP Martin brokers are facing criminal charges in Britain related to Libor manipulation.
The RP Martin transaction will be the latest acquisition bid by BGC, which started a hostile takeover offer in October for the GFI Group, a New York brokerage and clearing house. BGC owns about 13.5 percent of GFI.
The hostile bid prompted the CME Group this month to increase its offer to acquire GFI. The CME Group operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange.