Seeking significant growth, Euronext hails EU merger softening

The pan-European stock exchange hopes antitrust officials will cut it some slack as it chases global ambitions.

European stock exchange giant Euronext is hoping for a reform to EU merger rules as it looks to move beyond traditional operations, its CEO has told Euronews.  
Stéphane Boujnah, who also chairs Euronext’s board, hailed a proposed softening of Brussels antitrust laws, saying that Europe needed to compete with China and the US.  
“The world is going to be a better place if we have European-based large asset managers, European-based large market infrastructure and European-based large global investment banks,” he said. “For that we need more consolidation and we need a revisited approach of antitrust.” 
“It seems that there’s good news,” he added, hailing a recent apparent shift in approach that saw European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen call for merger rules to take account of resilience, efficiency and innovation.  
“It’s clear that there is a switch towards competitiveness and strategic autonomy” among EU officials, Boujnah said — potentially allowing restrictions intended to prevent undue market concentration to be relaxed.  
Back in 2012, the Commission blocked a proposed merger between Euronext, at the time attached to the New York Stock Exchange, and Germany’s Deutsche Börse, arguing that the new entity would have a “near monopoly” on exchange-traded European financial derivatives. 
“In the world of today, the battle for derivatives is not Deutsche Börse against Euronext, it’s Deutsche Börse, Euronext, ICE, CME, Cboe,” Boujnah said, citing several US-based rivals. 
EU merger rules are intended to stop a single player from dominating a market, to the consumers’ detriment. 
But Boujnah appears to join many national finance ministers in arguing that the EU needs to create European champions able to compete on a global stage in fields such as aeronautics.  
“In a world where China has appeared … maybe the balance between happy customer and stronger producers is to be revisited,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place with Boeing and Airbus than if we had only Boeing.” 
Euronext describes itself as a pan-European operator, running the exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon and Oslo – and recently finalised the integration of Milan’s Borsa Italiana, after it was sold by the London Stock Exchange Group.  
The Euronext group “is much more diversified and much stronger … we are not anymore the very tiny company that was carved out from the NYSE Euronext acquisition by ICE in 2014,” he said. 
A strategic plan due on 8 November will seek to “grow significantly on our ambition in terms of organic growth,” with a focus on post-trade services such as securities depositaries, Boujnah said.  
There are plenty of other barriers to cross-border mergers, but Boujnah isn’t worried about the return of economic nationalism in Europe, even after German leader Olaf Scholz rejected a bid by Italy’s Unicredit to acquire its domestic lender Commerzbank.  
“There are ways to make this type of deal happen, even for iconic companies,” Boujnah said. “The recipe is respect and transparency, and also to make sure that everyone feels at home in the combined group.” 
He doesn’t share concerns that Europe has lost the global competitiveness race – pointing out that pessimists who predicted the collapse of the euro over a decade ago were proven wrong. 
“I have no other place than Europe and I have no other future than making it a better place,” he said, adding: “For the ones who believe that it’s too complicated, that we fall behind — too bad, they should have been born in Australia.”