IG Group
IG Group is a UK-based company providing trading in financial derivatives such as contracts for difference and financial spread betting and, as of 2014, stockbroking to retail traders. While the majority of the company's activities are based in the UK, the company has expanded internationally. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
History
The company was founded in 1974 by Stuart Wheeler as a spread betting business under the name IG Index (an abbreviation for Investors Gold Index) which allowed people to trade gold prices as an index instead of buying the physical commodity. In July 2000, shares in the newly named IG Group plc were first listed on the London Stock Exchange.
In July 2002, IG Group commenced trading in Australia after a change in the country's financial services legislation made it possible to offer Contracts for Difference to Australian residents.
IG Group took the opportunity to acquire its founder's shares, and those of certain other long-standing shareholders, in a management buy-out (backed by venture capitalists CVC Capital Partners Ltd) which valued the company at £143 million; IG Group plc's listing on the London Stock Exchange was subsequently cancelled on 7 November 2003.
Index
An index is an indirect shortcut derived from and pointing into a greater volume of values, data, information or knowledge. Index may refer to:
Business
Publishing
MC2 France
MC2 France is a French software company that develops and publishes video games focusing on adventure games. It was formed in 2003 when Emmanuel Olivier merged Microïds and Wanadoo Edition. In late 2009 all of the licences associated with the company were purchased by Anuman Interactive, and currently the Microïds brand is used.
Brand history
Microïds
Microïds was founded in 1985 by Elliot Grassiano. For the first 10 years, Microïds was a development house, but in 1995 it expanded into publishing and distribution as well.
Microïds is well known for the development of the adventure games including Syberia, Syberia II, Post Mortem and its sequel Still Life. Other notable games that Microïds has produced include Far Gate and the Nicky Boum series of action games for the Commodore Amiga.
On 23 November 2009 Anuman Interactive announced that they were acquiring the mark of and all the associated licences of Microïds. The Microïds deal with MC2 was completed on 1 January 2010.
MC2 France
Database index
A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database table is accessed. Indexes can be created using one or more columns of a database table, providing the basis for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records.
An index is a copy of select columns of data from a table that can be searched very efficiently that also includes a low-level disk block address or direct link to the complete row of data it was copied from. Some databases extend the power of indexing by letting developers create indices on functions or expressions. For example, an index could be created on upper(last_name), which would only store the upper case versions of the last_name field in the index. Another option sometimes supported is the use of partial indices, where index entries are created only for those records that satisfy some conditional expression. A further aspect of flexibility is to permit indexing on user-defined functions, as well as expressions formed from an assortment of built-in functions.
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