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Europe’s biggest stock exchange operator Euronext is on the lookout for more acquisitions as it seeks to entrench its position in the region’s capital markets.
Stéphane Boujnah, chief executive, said “combining Euronext with any large exchange in Europe” could “create a lot of synergies”.
“We are monitoring all sort of situations and we are ready to strike or jump on any situation that becomes actionable,” he told the Financial Times.
Boujnah has led Euronext since 2015 and previously worked as a mergers and acquisitions banker at Santander and Deutsche Bank. He has expanded the group through a series of acquisitions in recent years, including Borsa Italiana, which owns the Milan stock exchange.
While he declined to comment on specific acquisition targets, Boujnah has previously told the FT that he is eager to buy Nasdaq’s Nordics business, which includes the Stockholm and Iceland stock exchanges, and is open to buying the Spanish exchanges BME from Swiss group SIX.
Stock exchange acquisitions would cement Euronext’s position as the biggest listing and trading venue in Europe. The group owns stock listing venues in Amsterdam, Paris and Lisbon, among other cities, as well as a clearing house.
Several large European stock exchange groups have tried and failed to merge or run partnerships over the past decade. European competition regulators in 2017 blocked a merger between Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange Group, while Deutsche Börse recently approached Euronext about launching a new tech-focused stock exchange.
European officials are seeking to revitalise the region’s fragmented capital markets, in order to encourage investment in domestic companies and deepen market integration.
Private equity company CVC and software group Planisware were among the 28 companies that listed on Euronext venues this year, Boujnah said. Companies raised €3.4bn through equity listings on Euronext venues, up 204 per cent compared with the second quarter of last year.
“The listings are not as hot as we thought it would be six months ago” as some companies postponed their IPOs because of mismatched valuation expectations, Boujnah said. But he added that “companies that 10 years ago would have listed on LSEG are now listing on Euronext”.
Euronext made €413mn in revenues in the second quarter, up 12 per cent on the same period last year. Stock listings accounted for €26.6mn in revenues, a 5 per cent increase on the same period last year.