Thursday February 11, 2021
Long feared Brexit result
London is no longer Europe's leading stock exchange
Since shares listed in euros can only be traded in the EU, trading in securities will also be shifted to the mainland as a result of Brexit. That is why London has not been the largest marketplace for stocks since the beginning of the year – but neither has its long-standing rival Frankfurt.
After Brexit, London will have to cede the leading position among the European trading centers to Amsterdam. More shares were traded on the stock exchanges in the Dutch capital in January than on the Thames, according to data from the futures exchange Cboe Europe.
According to this, the daily trading volume in Amsterdam was 9.2 billion euros, compared to 8.6 billion euros in London. For the year as a whole, the British were still clearly in first place with an average of 17.5 billion euros in 2020, Frankfurt am Main took second place with 5.9 billion euros. Amsterdam only made it to sixth place with 2.6 billion.
The financial center of London had long warned of the negative consequences of Great Britain's exit from the EU internal market. Exchange officials suspect that the shift in trade flows from London to Amsterdam is likely to be permanent as the EU insists that stocks quoted in euros must be traded in the EU. The triumphal march of Amsterdam was heralded when the European Cboe share platforms and London-based Turquoise became active there after the Brexit vote in 2016.
London hopes to compensate for a small part of the losses with trading in Swiss shares quoted in Swiss francs, which was permitted again this month. On average, 250 million euros change hands every day, which should move the London Stock Exchange back towards one billion. London ranked at this level before the EU ended trading in Swiss shares in its markets in June 2019. Since then, Switzerland and the EU have no longer recognized each other's stock exchanges.
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