By Chris Dorrell
London has knocked Amsterdam off its position as Europe’s top share trading hub for the first time in nearly three years.
The average daily volume of stock trading in London during May was around €9.3bn (£7.9bn), compared to €8.9bn (£7.5bn) in Amsterdam, as reported by Bloomberg.
This is the first time London has been Europe’s top share trading destination since July 2021, when the UK’s departure from the EU meant €6.5bn (£5.5bn) worth of deals went to the EU at the end of the transition period.
The news comes shortly after London recaptured its spot as Europe’s largest stock market from Paris, having spent most of the last two years in second place.
France’s stock market is now worth a combined $3.13tn (£2.47tn), while the UK sits at roughly $3.18tn (£2.51tn), according to a Bloomberg index.
French stocks have suffered in the past few weeks after Emmanuel Macron’s surprise election announcement raised fears about the country’s economic stability. The country’s big banks, in particular, have plummeted over the past few days.
The figures will help ease concerns that London is falling behind rival European financial centres. Concerns about the future of the City reached a climax when Cambridge tech firm ARM chose to list in New York rather than London.
In response, regulators and politicians launched a package of new rules to make London a more attractive place for firms to list.
Although London has a relatively poor recent record on IPOs, registering just five so far this year, it has done much better in terms of follow-on equity issuance.
Follow-ons are when companies issue new shares after their IPO. When summing together cash raised from both IPOs and follow-ons this year so far, the UK is sitting at $12.2bn (£9.6bn), compared to $4.3bn (£3.4bn) in France and $4.7bn (£3.7bn) in Germany.
