Susquehanna International Group, LLP (SIG) is a privately held, global trading and technology firm. SIG comprises a number of affiliated entities specializing in trading and proprietary investments in

equities Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion t ...

fixed income Fixed income refers to any type of investment under which the borrower or issuer is obliged to make payments of a fixed amount on a fixed schedule. For example, the borrower may have to pay interest at a fixed rate once a year and repay the pr ...

, energy, commodity, index and

derivative products In finance, a derivative is a contract between a buyer and a seller. The derivative can take various forms, depending on the transaction, but every derivative has the following four elements: # an item (the "underlier") that can or must be bou ...

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

and

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

, research, customer trading and institutional sales. SIG is a specialist or designated primary

market maker A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the difference, which is called the ''bid–ask spread'' or ''turn.'' Thi ...

(DPM) in approximately 600 equity options and 45 index options on the

CBOE Cboe Global Markets, Inc. is an American company that owns the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the stock exchange operator BATS Global Markets. History Founded by the Chicago Board of Trade in 1973 and member-owned for several decades, the ...

, AMEX, PHLX, and ISE, including equities such as

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. (stylized as JPMorganChase) is an American multinational financial services, finance corporation headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is List of largest banks in the United States, the largest ba ...

, GE,

PepsiCo PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase, New York, Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the f ...

, and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and indices such as

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

and

Russell 2000 The Russell 2000 Index is a small-cap U.S. stock market index that makes up the smallest 2,000 stocks in the Russell Index. It was started by the Frank Russell Company in 1984. The index is maintained by FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the L ...

options. The firm employs more than 3,000 people in offices across North America (

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, Stamford), Australia (

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

), Europe (

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

) and Asia (

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

History

SIG was founded in May 1987 by six entrepreneurs, including Arthur Dantchik and Jeff Yass, who met in the late 1970s at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where they gathered to play cards. The company was named after the

Susquehanna River The Susquehanna River ( ; Unami language, Lenape: ) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, crossing three lower Northeastern United States, Northeast states (New York, Pennsylvani ...

, which flows near their alma mater. By October 1988, the firm had 100 employees and was located above the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. The company generated $30 million in annual revenue in its first year, having earned millions through

put option In finance, a put or put option is a derivative instrument in financial markets that gives the holder (i.e. the purchaser of the put option) the right to sell an asset (the ''underlying''), at a specified price (the ''strike''), by (or on) a ...

s it had purchased prior to the Black Monday stock market crash. Susquehanna's profits in the late 1990s often topped $1 billion. By then, the company was trading convertible bonds, commodity options, index options, and was a major

exchange-traded fund An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund that is also an exchange-traded product, i.e., it is traded on stock exchanges. ETFs own financial assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, debts, futures contracts, and/or comm ...

. In 1996, SIG founded Heights Capital Management in

, which focuses on PIPE investments in healthcare and technology. In 2005, SIG launched SIG China, its venture capital operation in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. As of 2022, the firm had invested in over 350 companies with over 70 exits. In 2006, SIG launched Susquehanna Growth Equity, which invests in software and information services, and offers growth stage funding to companies operating in the U.S. and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. At this point, SIG had grown to over 12 offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. The same year, the firm invested in Kuxun, a search engine company, which was sold three years later, in 2009, to

Expedia Expedia Inc. is an online travel agency owned by Expedia Group, based in Seattle. The website and mobile app can be used to book airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruise ships, and vacation packages. Expedia.com was launched on ...

. SIG experienced a major downturn during the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

but rebounded quickly, benefitting from the federal government's bailout of the financial system. The firm invested $5 million into

ByteDance ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing, and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo, and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing ap ...

, the parent company of

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

, in 2012 when ByteDance was founded. As of 2020, its stake in ByteDance represented 15 percent of its fully-diluted capitalization table and was valued over $15 billion on paper. In 2013, SIG acquired G1 Execution Services LLC (G1X) from

E-Trade E*TRADE is an investment brokerage and electronic trading platform that operates as a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. History In 1982, physicist William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb founded TradePlus in Palo Alto, California, with $15,00 ...

. In 2014, SIG expanded its venture capital operations to

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. In 2017, SIG launched Susquehanna Private Capital, LLC, which focuses on buyouts of U.S. middle market companies in the aerospace, industrials, consumer, healthcare, and business and government services industries. Also in 2017, SIG established Nellie Analytics, a

-based sports betting company. As of 2018, the firm traded about seven percent of U.S. ETF volume and more than $1.5 trillion in ETFs globally on an annual basis. As of 2022, the firm had 14 offices worldwide. SIG played a significant

role in the 2024 merger of Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump Media & Technology Group.

Affiliates

* Susquehanna Financial Group (SFG): SIG's institutional broker-dealer business, which provides order execution and trading flow services, and equity research coverage of nearly 200 companies. * Susquehanna Structured Capital: Structured capital group that provides debt and structured equity investments to middle and lower-middle market companies as well as commercial and multi-family real estate projects. * Susquehanna Foundation: The corporate foundation of SIG. The foundation is organized as a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...

nonprofit and contributes to school reform causes.

Controversies and legal issues

Allegations of front-running client accounts

In 2009, the California Public Employees' Retirement System led a class action lawsuit against SIG and other broker-dealers, including

Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America) (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in ...

, Van der Moolen, and others, for improperly executing trades for their dealer accounts ahead of their clients. The lawsuit reached a settlement in 2012, when the defendants, including SIG, agreed to a $18.5 million settlement.

Allegations of spoofing stock

In 2022, Northwest Biotherapeutics claimed in a suit filed in a Manhattan federal court that SIG, Citadel Securities,

Virtu Financial Virtu Financial, Inc. is an American high-frequency trading company. The company went public on the Nasdaq in 2015. Organization Based in New York City, Virtu was founded by Vincent Viola, a former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange ...

, and other market making firms engaged in repeated spoofing that drove Northwest's share price downward. The case was dismissed in 2024.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://sig.com/ 1987 establishments in Pennsylvania American companies established in 1987 Companies based in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Financial services companies of the United States Privately held companies based in Pennsylvania