Talk:Thomas Peterffy/Archives/2015

Proposed updated and revision
Hello, anyone watching this page or coming across this. This article has been edited only sporadically over the last few years and is generally out-of-date and lacking in information. To address these issues and other problems, I've researched and written a draft I think should replace it, but before I explain my intended improvements, I would like to make clear that while writing the draft I was under the employment of Interactive Brokers, Thomas Peterffy's company. For this reason, I will not make any edits to the article myself, but am looking instead for editors to review what I have prepared and make the updates as they see fit.

For easy comparison, here are links to the current version of the article, and my proposed draft:
 * User:Ɱ/Thomas Peterffy
 * User:Ɱ/Thomas Peterffy

I understand that this is a significant amount of information to process. If you have any questions about changes I have made, please leave me a message here or on my talk page. Likewise, please feel free to make any changes you feel are needed directly to the draft in my user space. If you review my draft and have no concerns I would really appreciate it if you could replace the current version with what I have prepared. One last comment: some images and the categories have been disabled in my draft so they will need to be fixed when grabbing the markup from my user space. Thanks so much, -- ɱ    (talk)  05:25, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Compare pages – Wbm1058 (talk) 12:28, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I saw that you made some of the changes already, thanks! Do you have issues or concerns with any of my proposed changes? If so, I'll be happy to provide my reasoning behind the change.-- ɱ    (talk)  18:55, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm just taking it slowly one item at a time; others are free to help as well. I removed the Johns Hopkins University alumni categorization as I don't see any mention of this in the article. Neither do I see any mention of Clark University. All I see is that he "left" (i.e., "abandoned" or "dropped out") of studies at an unnamed university. Do you know if he has any connection to these universities? To keep Clark in the categorization, we need some form of confirmation. Thanks. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:01, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well in my research I found no mention of Johns Hopkins, although I did find that he went to Clark, in a number of sources, including his profile on the Bloomberg Terminal. Here's a good source for the Clark University bit: link. So please keep that category in, and you can add something about Clark if you want in the article text, but the company Interactive Brokers told me not to add any new information to my draft. What's unfortunate is that they said that only long after I already wrote a detailed article draft, at User:Ɱ/Thomas Peterffy2. So it's up to you if you want to use any of that information, but I am in no way requesting it or anything.-- ɱ    (talk)  19:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * One thing I also did was I fixed all of the refs for proper formatting and as much detail as possible; if you can, look through those and update the article accordingly. Thanks so much for your help so far.-- ɱ    (talk)  22:38, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I updated his net worth to the current year. I don't think we should attempt to track it in real-time. Trust that you don't mind my minor tweaks to your version, in order to aid comparisons. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There haven't been any changes in the past three months and it looks like there was some good cooperative effort, so I marked it done.-- CaroleHenson (talk) 22:33, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it's proper procedure to reopen it or do a new request, but many of the changes at User:Ɱ/Thomas Peterffy haven't been implemented; I feel that they should. Could Wbm1058 provide insight into the information that wasn't added/changed and/or could other editors make those changes?-- ɱ    (talk  ·  vbm)  22:39, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this has been on my back burner. I'll take another look. Of course another editor is free to help. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I just found the conversation at, and note that the current article only links to Interactive Brokers, but not to Interactive Brokers Group. The newer, shorter article was put up at the WP:primary topic / WP:common name, after the older and more encyclopedic article was moved off that title to "IB Group". I'm not sure I follow the rationale for this. The parent company seems to substantively be in only one business, and most of the other subsidiaries are just the same business operating in other countries. We're supposed to take a worldwide view of the topic, yet favor the American sub. over the others. The cynic in me is thinking that this is a convenient way to put the version designed to be read by the firm's (prospective) customers at the PT, while putting the version for investors in the firm and those with a general interest in its history in the other article. Wbm1058 (talk) 02:18, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You don't know me well enough then. I don't care about PR stuff and company image or anything. I primarily write historical articles (c.f. Briarcliff Farms) and was asked to do this IB stuff. I ended up thoroughly researching the operation, and found that IBG does a bunch of stuff and has a lot of history that wouldn't technically just apply to IB. The IB article currently has info only related to it, and the IBG one only has info that is too broad for the IB article. Also, as a side note - now that I think about it, maybe I should also do a short history section on the IB page with a link to IBG's history section; I shouldn't just assume people will go to the parent company article to read IB's specific history.-- ɱ    (talk  ·  vbm)  03:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, it should be fairly clear from the IBG article that the majority of it is history info; that's what I'm good at writing, what I'm good at searching for, and what I like to write about. If I really were a PR drone, I'd be putting in all sorts of info about the company, its specs, its awards, and other garbage like that, not what I can objectively call a neutral and detailed documentation of the organization's establishment and development.-- ɱ    (talk  ·  vbm)  03:36, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Right, I don't know you much at all. Agree that there is much more blatant promotional material elsewhere on Wikipedia. This organization has a somewhat complex structure; see this diagram. Per that chart, the LLC is the center of the universe, and thus perhaps should be the official name of the outfit covered by the Interactive Brokers Group article. It appears that the Inc. was created as a vehicle to sell 14.5% of the LLC to the public. The LLC, not the Inc, was founded in 1994. So when the Inc. reports its results, is it just giving figures representing the 14.5% that the public owns, or the results of the entire LLC? The more I look at this the less clear the distinction between the Inc. and the LLC becomes. The Inc. seems to control voting interests, while the LLC controls economic interests. I think you need to be a lawyer to understand it. Or make the official name  Interactive Brokers Group Inc. and LLC since the article covers both. As to the rationale for the second article, I see that their financial report breaks the business into two segments: electronic brokerage and market making. Interactive Brokers is about the electronic brokerage segment. I assume that the market making segment is called Timber Hill LLC on the org chart. I should reread Steiner's book; you may have noticed I posted a note about that (see above) in 2012. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * For your understanding, the LLC is an intermediate holding company that owns the electronic brokerage company and the market making company but the publicly traded company is Interactive Brokers Group Inc. (IBKR on the Nasdaq). When the public company files financial reports, it is reporting results for the entire group of companies, not just the % that is publicly held. The privately-held (IBG Holdings LLC) shares have all the voting rights and are owned and controlled by Peterffy and IBG employees. You are correct that IBG LLC has two business segments, domestic and foreign companies with Interactive Brokers in the name that provide electronic brokerage services to customers and Timber Hill companies that conduct market making and proprietary trading on various exchanges worldwide. Also, I didn't see your comment, but I read Steiner's book last summer and found it interesting and pretty well written.-- ɱ    (talk  ·  vbm)  17:58, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The LLC is an intermediate holding company that owns the electronic brokerage company and the market making company. ✅ (IBG LLC)
 * The publicly traded company is Interactive Brokers Group Inc. (IBKR on the Nasdaq). ✅
 * When the public company files financial reports, it is reporting results for the entire group of companies, not just the % that is publicly held. ✅ Yes, I believe this is right. In other words, the financial results are essentially those of IBG LLC, which is the umbrella holding "the entire group of companies".
 * The privately-held (IBG Holdings LLC) shares are owned and controlled by Peterffy and IBG employees. ✅ I'll assume this is true. Perhaps substitute "insiders" for employees, if there are other private investors.
 * The privately-held (IBG Holdings LLC) shares have all the voting rights. No, the privately-held (IBG Holdings LLC) shares have 85.5% of the voting rights, and 85.5% ownership ("economic interest").
 * So, again, it seems to me that for our purposes, IBG, Inc. and IBG LLC are essentially the same entity, and the only real reason for two entities is some legal one involving a subtle separation of voting rights and economic interests that I don't understand the rationale for. The public shareholders have both 14.5% voting and economic interest, and IBG Holdings LLC has both 85.5% voting and economic interest, in all of the actual operating subsidiaries at the bottom of the chain. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, I found a better explanation in the Form 10K attached to the annual report. That chart I linked above didn't explain that there were two classes of common stock. I assume the rationale is that the LLC predates the public company, so this structure was designed to accommodate that. The Class B shares owned by IBG Holdings LLC have no economic value but represent 85.5% voting interest. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:30, 23 March 2015 (UTC)