A stockbroker is an individual or company that buys and sells stocks and other investments for a financial market participant in return for a commission, markup, or fee. In most countries they are regulated as a broker or broker-dealer and may need to hold a relevant license and may be a member of a stock exchange. They generally act as a financial advisor and investment manager. In this case they may also be licensed as a financial adviser such as a registered investment adviser.
Financial services are economic services tied to finance provided by financial institutions. Financial services encompass a broad range of service sector activities, especially as concerns financial management and consumer finance.
The Sage Group plc, commonly known as Sage, is a British multinational enterprise software company based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. As of 2017, it is the UK's second largest technology company, the world's third-largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software, the largest supplier to small businesses, and has 6.1 million customers worldwide. It has offices in 23 countries. The company is a patron of The Glasshouse, Gateshead music venue in Gateshead.
Tesco Personal Finance plc, trading as Tesco Bank, is a British retail bank which was formed in July 1997. The bank was formed as part of a 50:50 joint venture between The Royal Bank of Scotland and Tesco, the largest supermarket in the United Kingdom, employing 2,800 people.
HSBC UK Bank plc is a British multinational banking and financial services organisation based in Birmingham, England. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global HSBC banking and financial group, which has been headquartered in London since 1993. The UK headquarters of HSBC is located at One Centenary Square in Birmingham.
Wholesale banking is the provision of services by banks to larger customers or organizations such as mortgage brokers, large corporate clients, mid-sized companies, real estate developers and investors, international trade finance businesses, institutional customers, and services offered to other banks or other financial institutions.
interactive investor Limited is a subscription-based online investment service in the United Kingdom, founded in 1995 by the entrepreneur Sherry Coutu. It provides financial information, as well as investment tools. It is the UK's biggest flat-fee investment platform, with £59 billion of assets under administration and over 400,000 customers. The company is based in Manchester, with offices in London and Leeds. Since 2022 it has been a subsidiary of UK-based investment company Abrdn.
BT Consumer is the main retail division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group that provides fixed-line, mobile, broadband and digital television to consumers in the UK. It buys access to some of these services from BT's other divisions: Openreach and EE. It is the largest consumer fixed-line and broadband ISP in the UK.
HBOS plc is a banking and insurance company in the United Kingdom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lloyds Banking Group, having been taken over in January 2009. It was the holding company for Bank of Scotland plc, which operated the Bank of Scotland and Halifax brands in the UK, as well as HBOS Australia and HBOS Insurance & Investment Group Limited, the group's insurance division.
THG plc, formerly The Hut Group, is a British e-commerce retail company headquartered in Manchester, England. It sells own-brand and third-party cosmetics and dietary supplements online, and provides an end-to-end e-commerce service to third parties through its Ingenuity division. As of 2024, the company operates 13 fulfilment centres, 9 production facilities and 32 data centres worldwide.
Lloyds Banking Group plc is a British financial institution formed through the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB in 2009. It is one of the UK's largest financial services organisations, with 30 million customers and 65,000 employees. Lloyds Bank was founded in 1765 but the wider Group's heritage extends over 320 years, dating back to the founding of the Bank of Scotland by the Parliament of Scotland in 1695.
Santander UK plc is a British bank, wholly owned by Banco Santander, a Spanish bank. Santander UK plc manages its affairs autonomously, with its own local management team, responsible solely for its performance.
Halifax Share Dealing is a British online broker, allowing customers to buy and sell shares in UK and international companies across a range of markets. It is a subsidiary of the Bank of Scotland which itself is part of the Lloyds Banking Group.
Barclays plc is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services.
Aldermore Bank plc is a retail bank which provides financial services to small and medium-sized businesses and personal customers. It was founded in 2009 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015. It was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until it was acquired by South African banking conglomerate FirstRand in March 2018.
Clubfinance is a financial services company headquartered in Bristol, UK. The firm acts as intermediary for a number of different fund and share dealing platforms. It previously arranged tax efficient investments such as venture capital trusts and Enterprise Investment Schemes for private investors on a non-advised basis.
Safestore is the UK’s largest and Europe’s second largest provider of self-storage. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Interactive Brokers, Inc. (IB), headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, is an American multinational brokerage firm which operates the largest electronic trading platform in the United States by number of daily average revenue trades. In 2023, the platform processed an average of 3 million trades per trading day. Interactive Brokers is the largest foreign exchange market broker and is one of the largest prime brokers servicing commodity brokers. The company brokers stocks, options, futures contracts, exchange of futures for physicals, options on futures, bonds, mutual funds, currency, cryptocurrency, contracts for difference, derivatives, and event-based trading contracts on election and other outcomes. Interactive Brokers offers direct market access, omnibus and non-disclosed broker accounts, and provides clearing services. The firm has operations in 34 countries and 27 currencies and has 2.6 million institutional and individual brokerage customers, with total customer equity of US$426 billion as of December 31, 2023. In addition to its headquarters in Greenwich, on the Gold Coast of Connecticut, the company has offices in major financial centers worldwide. More than half of the company's customers reside outside the United States, in approximately 200 countries.
Willis Towers Watson plc, branded as WTW and stylised in its logo as wtw, is a British-American multinational company that provides commercial insurance brokerage services, strategic risk management services, employee benefits and compensation management, and actuarial analysis and investment management for pension plans and financial endowments. Insurance brokerage and risk management services account for 40% of the company's revenues, while employee benefit and wealth-related services account for 60% of revenues. The company operates in more than 140 countries. Customers include 95% of FTSE 100 companies, 89% of Fortune 1000 companies, and 91% of Fortune Global 500 companies. The company is the largest administrator among the 200 largest pension plans in the U.K. and one of the largest in Germany. The company is domiciled in Ireland, with its principal executive offices at the Willis Building in London.
Octopus Energy Group is a British renewable energy group. It was founded in 2015 with the backing of Octopus Group, a British asset management company. Headquartered in London, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Octopus is the UK's largest supplier of electricity to domestic customers, and the second largest in domestic gas.
