An electronic trading firm cut headcount and raised pay to £535k in London
Last year was a good year for the Chicago Trading Company (CTC), at least if its UK entity is any indication. After making a net loss in 2024, the electronic trading firm's London team had a resurgence, despite a reduction in headcount.
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Accounts for 'CTC London Limited' show that pre-tax profits in 2025 were £12m ($16.3m), up from a pre-tax loss of £3.7m in 2024. This was driven by excellent performance in European markets; while turnover in the UK fell slightly to £12.6m, European revenue more than tripled to £28.6m.
Over that same period, headcount fell from 55 to 40. Trading staff increased from 19 to 22, but its 'office staff' headcount halved from 36 to 18. The additions to CTC's trading division appear to include graduate hires. Multiple people who interned at the firm in 2024 said via LinkedIn that they joined the firm full-time last summer. Despite the reductions, overall expenditure on 'wages and salaries' increased, such that compensation per head rose to £535k ($729k).
It's not clear whether the headcount reduction involves employees moving from one entity to another. CTC appears to have just one other UK entity, dedicated to "resource sharing agreements," which only has two employees and has no employee expenses.
Similarly to other trading firms like Jane Street, CTC is also expanding beyond the prop trading space in which it made its name. It has a venture capital arm, for example, which has made multiple investments over the past 18 months into prediction markets and sports-betting-focused startups in the US.
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