Thomas Peterffy

Thomas Peterffy
Born	30 9 1944 (age 82 years old (as of 2026) ) Hungary
Occupation	financier and electronic-trading entrepreneur
Known for	Founder and chairman of Interactive Brokers
Education	New York University (did not graduate)

Hungarian-born American financier; founder and chairman of Interactive Brokers

Thomas Peterffy (born 30 September 1944) is a Hungarian-born American financier, the founder and chairman of the electronic brokerage Interactive Brokers and an early developer of computerised options trading.^[1]^[2] On 20 October 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Thomas Peterffy 21st in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$94.83 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as Discount brokerage.^[1]^[3] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Thomas Peterffy 23rd, at US$82.9 billion.^[4] He is a major donor to Republican and Republican-aligned committees in US federal elections (see Political activity).^[5]^[6]

Early life and education

Forbes records that Peterffy was born in Hungary on 30 September 1944 and lists New York University as an institution he attended without graduating.^[1] Interactive Brokers' own executive biography states that he emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1965.^[2] Forbes's profile text describes him arriving in America at the age of 21 with no money, and says that he saved US$200,000 while working as an engineer before buying a US$36,000 seat on the American Stock Exchange.^[1] A 2017-era profile in Florida Trend said he first worked as a draftsman at a surveying business and taught himself computer programming.^[7]

Business career

According to the FIA, which inducted him into its Futures Hall of Fame in 2007, Peterffy entered the derivatives business as a technology specialist at Mocatta Metals, where he learned about financial and commodity markets from Henry Jarecki.^[8]

In 1977 he bought a seat on the American Stock Exchange and traded equity options as an individual market maker; the company says he was among the first to use a computerised mathematical model to value option prices continuously.^[2]^[9] Five years later he built and ran an automated trading system for equity options, and in 1983 he developed a tablet computer for his traders to use on exchange floors.^[2] By 1986 he had developed a fully integrated, automated market-making system for stocks, options and futures, which was later extended to markets around the world.^[2] The FIA notes that he set up Timber Hill as a proprietary trading firm and built it into one of the leading US options market makers, and that his order-routing network of the 1980s became the basis of Interactive Brokers.^[8]

Interactive Brokers was formed in 1993, combining the group's transaction-processing capacity with the electronic exchanges then being established around the world.^[2] Forbes says Peterffy was chief executive until December 2019 and now chairs the company, and that in March 2017 he announced that part of the market-making business would be wound down because of competition from faster rivals.^[1] Interactive Brokers' executive page now lists him as founder and chairman of the board, with Milan Galik as chief executive.^[2] In 2022 the Museum of American Finance gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.^[10]

In June 2021 the Hungarian business site Portfolio.hu reported that the Central European subsidiary of Interactive Brokers, based in Budapest, had recently received a licence from the Hungarian central bank and had become a member of the Budapest Stock Exchange; in the accompanying interview Peterffy said he had insisted that the regional centre be in Budapest.^[11]

Wealth

Forbes attributes Peterffy's fortune to his stake in Interactive Brokers and lists the source of wealth as discount brokerage.^[1] He is also a large landowner. Forbes's 2026 Forbes 400 text says he holds more than 560,000 acres, mostly in Florida.^[1] Florida Trend reported that Four Rivers Land & Timber, a company that paid at least US$710 million in December 2015 for the more than 500,000-acre Foley timberland holding in north Florida, was later identified as Peterffy's; the magazine described the tract as believed to be the largest contiguous undeveloped private landholding east of the Mississippi River.^[7] In November 2024 he bought a mangrove parcel of almost 4 acres in Palm Beach from Audubon Everglades for US$1.3 million, and The Palm Beach Post reported that he took on its restoration and protection as a natural habitat.^[12]

Wealth history

Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 17 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2010. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list, and, where applicable, the rank and estimate in the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans.^[4]^[1]

Forbes estimates by list year
Year	World's Billionaires rank	Net worth (US$ bn)	Forbes 400 rank	Forbes 400 net worth (US$ bn)
2009	–	–	236	1.5
2010	721	1.4	290	1.4
2011	879	1.4	60	5.0
2012	189	5.4	77	4.6
2013	248	5.0	65	6.4
2014	147	8.8	50	9.1
2015	114	10.9	33	13.5
2016	88	11.1	32	12.6
2017	82	13.8	31	15.1
2018	47	20.3	22	20.2
2019	63	17.1	31	17.5
2020	73	14.3	26	17.2
2021	65	25.0	36	20.0
2022	80	20.1	31	20.3
2023	57	25.3	27	29.7
2024	44	34.0	23	40.0
2025	27	57.3	18	73.3
2026	23	82.9	15	107.0

Philanthropy

Inside Philanthropy reported in April 2026 that Peterffy had rarely featured in the philanthropic press. It said that a foundation he set up about a decade earlier, Balance for Freedom, held several million dollars but had made no grants in five of the previous six years.^[6] The family's main charitable vehicle is the Peterffy Foundation, launched in November 2014. Peterffy is not on its board, which consists of his three children, Alexandra, Catherine and William, and a lawyer. In 2020 he gave the foundation US$78 million in shares. Since 2021 its grants have averaged just under US$7 million a year and have focused mainly on the environment; the largest recent awards were US$1.6 million to Colectivo Quipa and US$1.4 million to Land is Life.^[6] The table summarises the foundation's IRS filings.^[13]

Foundation finances from IRS filings (US$ million; latest four tax years with processed data)
Foundation	Form	Tax year	Total assets, end of year	Grants and contributions paid	Contributions received
Peterffy Foundation	990-PF	2023	111.0	7.4	0.0
Peterffy Foundation	990-PF	2022	105.5	7.6	0.0
Peterffy Foundation	990-PF	2021	132.9	6.3	0.0
Peterffy Foundation	990-PF	2020	107.1	3.9	78.0

Political activity

In the 2012 US election Peterffy paid for national and regional television advertising in which he described growing up under socialism in Hungary and urged viewers to vote Republican. Politico reported that he had spent at least US$8 million on the advertisements, which were placed by Mentzer Media, a firm whose clients included pro-Republican super PACs.^[14] Inside Philanthropy described him in 2026 as having given millions to Republican politicians.^[6]

Itemised contributions to federal committees under his name, with Interactive Brokers as the employer, are summarised below for the 2022–2026 cycles. The totals are lower bounds, because only the 100 largest records were retrieved.^[5]

Across the 41 non-memo records retrieved for the 2022–2026 cycles, the filtered total is US$21,400,500 (a lower bound). The largest recipient committees, as named in the filings, were CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND (US$6,000,000), KEYSTONE RENEWAL PAC (US$3,800,000), THE SENTINEL ACTION FUND (US$2,000,000), GLCF, INC. (US$1,500,000), TRUTH AND COURAGE PAC (US$1,300,000).^[5]

Federal contributions (FEC Schedule A, itemised; lower bound)
Cycle	Total (US$, lower bound)	Records	Largest recipient committees (as filed with the FEC)
2022	$6,136,600	6	CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND ($5,000,000); CONNECTICUT PATRIOTS PAC ($500,000); OUR AMERICAN CENTURY ($300,000); SAVING ARIZONA PAC ($300,000)
2024	$13,864,600	26	KEYSTONE RENEWAL PAC ($3,800,000); THE SENTINEL ACTION FUND ($2,000,000); GLCF, INC. ($1,500,000); TRUTH AND COURAGE PAC ($1,300,000)
2026	$1,399,300	9	EMMER MAJORITY BUILDERS ($899,200); REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE ($325,100); V-PAC: VICTORS, NOT VICTIMS ($100,000); TEAM SUNUNU ($50,000)

Controversies and legal issues

On 10 August 2020 Interactive Brokers LLC agreed to pay a combined US$38 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over anti-money-laundering failures. The SEC's US$11.5 million settlement concerned the firm's failure to file more than 150 suspicious activity reports on US microcap securities trades over about a year.^[15] The CFTC's parallel order, which imposed a US$11.5 million civil penalty plus disgorgement of US$706,214, found that the firm had failed to diligently supervise the handling of several commodity trading accounts and to implement procedures to detect and report suspicious transactions.^[16] These were actions against the company; neither release named Peterffy personally.

International and political links

This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."

Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)

In March 2019 Interactive Brokers announced that its institutional and retail clients could trade shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, connecting to it through a banking intermediary based in Israel. This was a company product expansion; Peterffy was quoted in the release as founder, chairman and chief executive.^[17]