INTL FCStone 2012 Annual Report Download - page 18
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Please find page 18 of the 2012 INTL FCStone annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.INTL FCSTONE INC.Form10K2
PART I
ITEM 1 Business
PART I
ITEM 1 Business
roughout this document, unless the context otherwise requires, the terms “ Company” , “ we” , “ us” and “ our” refer to INTL FCStone Inc. and
its consolidated subsidiaries. INTL FCStone Inc., formerly known as International Assets Holding Corporation, is a Delaware corporation.
Overview of Business and Strategy
We are a nancial services group employing more than 1,000
people in o ces in twelve countries. We provide comprehensive
risk management advisory services to mid-sized commercial
customers. We also utilize our expertise and capital to provide
foreign exchange and treasury services, securities execution,
physical commodities trading services and execution in both
listed futures and option contracts as well as structured over-
the-counter (“OTC”) products in a wide range of commodities.
We are a customer-centric organization focused on acquiring
and building long-term relationships with our customers by
providing consistent, quality execution and value-added nancial
solutions, with the goal of earning returns that allow us to achieve
our nancial objectives.
We provide these services to a diverse group of more than 20,000
customers located in more than 100 countries, including producers,
processors and end-users of nearly all widely-traded physical
commodities whose margins are sensitive to commodity price
movements; to commercial counterparties who are end-users of
our products and services; to governmental and non-governmental
organizations; and to commercial banks, brokers, institutional
investors and major investment banks.
e Company engages in direct sales e orts to seek new customers,
with a strategy of extending our services to potential customers
who are similar in size and operations to our existing customer
base, as well as other kinds of customers that have risk management
needs that could be e ectively met by our services. We plan to
expand our services into new business product lines and new
geographic regions, particularly in Asia, Europe, Australia, Latin
America and Canada. In executing this plan, we intend to both
target new geographic locations and expand the services o ered
in current locations, where there is an unmet demand for our
services particularly in areas where commodity price controls
have been recently lifted. In addition, in select instances we
pursue small to medium sized acquisitions in which we target
customer-centric organizations in order to expand our product
o erings and/or geographic presence.
In the last 24 months, we have opened our rst o ce in Paraguay,
a second o ce in China as well as four additional o ces in
Brazil to address the rapidly growing demand for our services
in those countries. We have also expanded our product o ering,
primarily in our Commodity & Risk Management segment, in
both our London and Singapore o ces with the relocation of
experienced risk management consultants into these o ces to
address a growing demand for our services in Europe and Asia.
In addition, we have completed nine acquisitions in the last 36
months, which has allowed us to expand our commodity product
o erings and the scope of services provided to our commercial
customer base as well as the geographic locations in which the
services are provided.
Our strategy is to utilize a centralized and disciplined process
for capital allocation, risk management and cost control, while
delegating the execution of strategic objectives and day-to-day
management to experienced individuals. is requires high quality
managers, a clear communication of performance objectives and
strong nancial and compliance controls. e Company believes
this strategy will enable the Company to build a scalable and
signi cantly larger organization that embraces an entrepreneurial
approach to business, supported and underpinned by strong
central controls.
Each of the Company’s businesses is volatile and their nancial
performance can change due to a variety of factors which are both
outside of management’s control and not readily predictable. To
address this volatility, the Company has sought to diversify into
a number of uncorrelated businesses.