In a statement on Thursday, Britain’s IG said, it plans to acquire tastytrade, a U.S. trading platform, for $1 billion. The development will see IG venturing into North America following a stellar year for the new breed of retail investment brokerages.

The Coronavirus induced COVID-19 pandemic which brought lockdown in most countries increased market volatility which has been a boon for IG’s revenues and profits; the same has been true for its peers CMC Markets and Plus500 as well. Robinhood.com and its app-based trading has gained a wider footprint in the United States.

In a statement, IG said tastytrade shareholders will get $300 million in cash and 61 million IG shares, valued at $700 million, marking the London-listed company’s biggest deal to date.

IG, whose first-half earnings more than doubled, said the deal will be low single digit accretive to its adjusted earnings per share in the first full year after closing.

Incidentally, Tastytrade has more than 105,000 active trading accounts as well as around 900,000 unique registrations; its YouTube channel has 206,000 subscribers and 8 hours of live programming a day. In comparison, Robinhood, which said earlier in May that it had 13 million user accounts, has 3,560 subscribers on its YouTube account.

After IG’s acquisition of Tastytrade, the latter’s senior management will continue in their positions. In a statement both companies said, they hope to complete the deal in the first quarter of the next financial year.

“While our long-term goal has always been to go global, we waited almost 10 years until we found the right partner and perfect match,” said Co-CEO of tastytrade Tom Sosnoff.