The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) achieved the strongest equity trading volumes of any European exchange group in the first half of 2014, buoyed by strong growth on Borsa Italiana.
Figures from Thomson Reuters Equity Market Share Reporter show combined market share on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Borsa Italiana during the first six months of the year reached 20.01%. This has increased from 19.2% in the same period of 2013. While the LSE’s market share fell from 12.6% to 11.6%, Borsa Italiana saw major growth, up from 6.6% a year ago to 8.5% at the end of H1 2014.
Improved economic conditions in Italy, as the country escapes the worst of the financial and currency crisis that have dampened confidence in recent years, may be partly responsible for the increase in activity. However, a buoyant UK economy has not helped LSE to grow its market share.
Turquoise, the pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF) majority owned by LSEG, has also seen a major uptick in its market share. During the first half of 2013, Turquoise accounted for 7.8% of European equity trading but during the same period this year its share of trading has risen to 9.6%.
In the latter half of 2013, LSEG split Turquoise’s derivatives market and integrated it into the main group to enable the equity MTF to focus on its core offering. It also appointed the former head of UBS MTF, Robert Barnes, as CEO and embarked on a strategy to promote its randomised crossing capability, Turquoise Uncross.
As LSEG has bolstered its market share, former market leader BATS Chi-X Europe has seen its portion of equity trading decline, putting it in second place. While BATS’s total equity market share in H1 2013 was 21.4%, by the first half of 2014 this has fallen to 19.4%, according to Thomson Reuters’ data.
Deutsche Börse’s Xetra trading platform has also suffered, with market share falling from 13.1% in H1 2013 to 11.3% more recently. SIX Swiss Exchange also dropped from 7.4% to 6.2% over the same period.
Euronext, which was acquired by Intercontinental Exchange late last year and spun out in an IPO in June, remained stable, seeing a slight increase in market share from 15.1% to 15.2% over the same period.
Total European equity trading in 2014 to date has been stronger than in recent years, with €4.98 trillion of market turnover during the first half, up from €4.33 trillion in the same period last year. However, trading volumes have been slowly declining over the last six months, and June turnover was down for the third month in a row, falling 4.8% from €789.8 billion in May to €752 billion last month.