CMC Markets Executives Granted £2.1M in Shares Incentives

CMC Markets awards top executives over £2.1M in shares amid stock slump; Lord Cruddas earns £14.5M in dividends last year.

Key Points:

• CEO Peter Cruddas and other executives received over £2.1M in CMCX shares under incentive and equity plans.
• CMCX stock has declined 22% over the past year, raising concerns amid generous executive compensation.

CMC Markets (LON: CMCX) awarded over £2.1 million in company shares to senior executives through incentive and management equity plans, even as its stock significantly declined over the past year.

The awards, which form part of the brokerage’s long-term executive compensation structure, were disclosed in a regulatory filing last week. CEO and founder Lord Peter Cruddas, along with Deputy CEO David Fineberg and Head of Asia Pacific Matthew Lewis, received a combined total of more than £1.24 million in shares under the company’s “combined incentive plan.”

Meanwhile, CMC Markets granted nearly £900,000 in shares to Laurence Booth, Head of Capital Markets, and Christopher Forbes, Head of Asia, through a separate “management equity plan.”

CMC Markets Executives Granted £2.1M in Shares Incentives

• Lord Peter Cruddas received 226,519 units of CMCX shares
• David Fineberg received 132,274 units
• Matthew Lewis received 155,138 units
• Laurence Booth was awarded 309,533 units
• Christopher Forbes received 61,906 units

Although the company issued the shares at a nominal value of 25 pence each, CMCX shares traded at £2.41 at Friday’s close, significantly increasing the market value of the awards.

In addition to the awards, the same executives acquired another 143,553 units during the week shares which had vested under the company’s existing incentive plan. However, nearly half of those shares were promptly sold.

The share activity comes at a time of uneven performance for CMCX stock. Although the company saw a rally earlier this year, shares have dropped nearly 9% over the past six months and are down more than 22% year-on-year.

Lord Cruddas, who founded CMC Markets in 1989, remains the dominant shareholder with a 64% stake in the company. According to the latest financial disclosures, he earned a base salary of £700,000 in the last fiscal year, along with a bonus of £365,900. More notably, he pocketed approximately £14.5 million in dividends.

Despite the stock’s decline, the CEO’s financial reward continues to be substantial, bolstered by his massive shareholding.

Institutional and Insider Activity

Institutional investors, including Aberforth and Schroders, each hold approximately 5% of CMC Markets, with total institutional ownership hovering around 20–25%. Retail shareholders, company employees, and insiders hold the remainder.

Recent insider trading disclosures show that Victoria Fineberg, identified as a “person closely associated” with Deputy CEO David Fineberg, sold 100,000 shares worth roughly £252,000. Meanwhile, David Fineberg himself has increased his stake, purchasing over £420,000 worth of CMCX shares in March through his self-invested pension plan. His total compensation for the last fiscal year approached £1 million.

The generous share-based incentives may raise questions among investors, particularly as the company navigates a turbulent market environment. Still, CMC Markets has posted a 33% annual profit jump in its FY25 results, and hinted at new initiatives, including a potential launch of tokenised assets, as part of its strategic roadmap.

The coming quarters will reveal whether these executive incentives translate into sustained shareholder value amid continued volatility in the retail trading sector.

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