IG Group have satisfactory six months; Quickfire has Magic Dreams; PKR available on iPad

news in brief may 2Financial trading firm IG Group reported a “satisfactory” set of interim results for the second half of 2012 as profits dropped by 21 percent. The firm saw profit before tax drop to £81.1million at the end of November – down from £103.1m the year before. Net trading revenue was down 14 percent to £169million and it was blamed on “global economic uncertainty”, “fragile consumer sentiment” and “ongoing market intervention” by various central banks. One bright spot was the growth seen by new offices in Sweden and the Netherlands with Spain and Germany seeing a high number of active clients. CEO, Tim Howkins also explained: “We continue to maintain an appropriate level of investment in IT and marketing, mindful of the need to balance short term profitability against investment for the long term.”

Quickfire has signed an agreement with Push Gaming to provide Magic Dreams games to the Microgaming-powered platform. The deal will see a number of land-based games developed by Magic Dreams adapted by Push Gaming so that Quickfire can offer the popular games to their stable of customers. The first three Magic Dreams games to be placed on the Quickfire platform are Double Draw Poker, Xcalibur and The Jungle II.

3D poker firm PKR has launched an iPad Poker App for UK customers. Available on the App Store it allows players to take part in real-money ring games as well as sit-and-go tournaments with the ability to play multi-table tournaments to be unlocked in the future. Customers in other jurisdictions will be able to use the app in future and COO Leon Walters added: I’m very pleased to have launched the poker app after several months of hard work by the team. This release represents one of the most significant steps forward for PKR since our inception in 2006. We aim to quickly follow this first phase of our efforts to reach the growing mobile poker audience with iPhone and Android versions.”