Luxembourg Bourse Remains Leader For International Listed Securities

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

13 August 2007

In an environment that has become increasingly competitive, the Luxembourg Stock Exchange remains the leading centre for the listing of international securities, with the number of quotation lines having increased by 12.28% to 43,077 between June 30 2006 and the end of June 2007, the bourse has announced.

Of these, 39,857 were on the regulated market and 3,220 on the Euro MTF market. These securities were made up of the following: 30,169 bonds, 28 Luxembourg and foreign shares, 224 Global Depositary Receipts, 7,209 investment funds (including 7,030 Luxembourg funds), and 5,407 warrants.

Moreover, the number of new listings of securities during the first six months of the year reached 6,927 units, against 5,387 during the first half of 2006. The increase in the number of admissions results mainly from the bond segment, which saw 4,314 new admissions from January to June 2007 against 3,651 in the first half of 2006, and from the warrants segment (2,000 in the first half of 2007 against 1,015 in the first half of 2006).

During the first half of 2007, trading volumes reached EUR418.78 million (US$571.8 million), with a daily average of EUR3.40 million. The share portion of trading volumes reached EUR110.98 million, or 26.50% of total volume. The bond segment reached the sum of EUR307,80 million. For its part, the LuxX index closed the half year at 2,531.84 points.

The Luxembourg Stock Exchange said that it has followed very closely the work connected with the transposition into Luxembourg law of the markets in financial instruments directive (MiFID). This transposition was carried out on July 13th 2007 by the passing of the law on markets in financial instruments. For the Stock Exchange, one of the consequences of this was the disappearance of the concession from which it has benefited since its creation.

Within the framework of their joint partnership Euronext N.V., a subsidiary of NYSE Euronext, and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange created, on May 21st 2007, a European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) whose headquarters is in Luxembourg.

The EEIG form, as established by a European regulation of July 25th 1985, has as its aim to facilitate or to develop the economic activities of the members of the Grouping by the pooling of resources, activities and skills. This pooling should allow both parties to obtain better results than by business activities carried out in isolation.

Taking account of these characteristics, Euronext N.V. and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange considered that the EEIG would constitute an entirely appropriate vehicle to carry out the projects of their partnership. On May 2nd 2007, the first stage of this was achieved with the migration of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange to the NSC trading platform.

The changeover to NSC is the first phase in the exchange of technologies foreseen by the partnership. When technical aspects have been put in place, the partners will take advantage of the entirety of the capabilities of the new EEIG in order to market the joint brand LuxNext to capital markets players, as well as to expand the corporate bond segment in the areas of listing, trading and information dissemination.

The presidency of the Luxembourg Financial Industry Federation, PROFIL, was entrusted to the Luxembourg Stock Exchange from July 2005 to June 2007. In this respect, the Stock Exchange contributed to the promotion of the financial centre and the organisation of various events, notably a conference presenting the financial centre in Dubai on May 14th 2007, and the holding of the Luxembourg Financial Forum on June 1st 2007. Staged for the second time, this Forum brought together in Luxembourg 550 decision-makers from Luxembourg and abroad for discussion on, in particular, the questions of the financing of pension systems. Attendees were also able to attend a dialogue between Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, on the theme “Project Euro – On the Path towards a Unified Europe."

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