Euronext CEO: flows of capital already moving to Europe due to Brexit

PARIS (Reuters) - Flows of capital have already moved over to continental Europe as a result of Brexit, said the head of pan-European stock market operator Euronext on Tuesday. “A significant part of the flows to the continent have already migrated on the continent, even though staff haven’t massively moved already,” said Euronext chief executive Stephane Boujnah. He added that as far as capital flows were concerned, Brexit had already happened and was irreversible. “Market operators cannot afford to have the same decision-making volatility as politicians,” added Boujnah, speaking on the sidelines of a Paris banking conference. Earlier, Euronext’s chief executive Stephane Boujnah sees a growing momentum for new stock listings in the second half of the year, following the French and Dutch elections, he said on Sunday.

Euronext saw 15 companies making their debut on its four stock exchanges over the first half of the year, raising 2.7 billion euros ($3.1 billion). That was the same number as the first half of 2016, with 3.2 billion euros raised.

“There are many operations (listings) that have been postponed,” the CEO said, citing the French and Dutch elections as the reason. “I am extremely confident over the second-half,” Boujnah said in an interview at a business conference in the French southeastern city of Aix-en-Provence. The group, which owns stock exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Brussels, has trimmed its costs since its own share listing in 2014 and wants to use its firepower to better compete with bigger rivals London Stock Exchange Group and Deutsche Boerse. “Our ambition is to deploy the balance sheet we have… to make significant acquisitions that would allow to diversify our revenue base,” Boujnah said, adding Euronext had the financial leeway to spend between 1 billion to 1.5 billion euros on acquisitions. Earlier this year, Euronext had agreed to buy Paris-based clearing house LCH SA for 510 million euros ($538 million), pending a Deutsche-Boerse-LSE tie-up agreement. The merger between the two stock exchanges fell through and so did the LCH SA acquisition as a result.