Deutsche Börse rejects main merger | EUROtoday

The CEO of Deutsche Börse AG, Stephan Leithner, rejected hypothesis about one other try at a significant European merger amongst inventory exchanges: “We as icebreakers, that’s not a model. We have had enough experience.” Leithner didn’t wish to take part in hypothesis as as to whether the Paris Euronext boss Stéphane Boujnah would possibly name him and what he would then say. In a authorities assertion within the fall, Chancellor Friedrich Merz instructed the creation of a European Stock Exchange as a central European inventory trade.

Leithner took the annual press convention on Thursday in Frankfurt as a possibility to level out in lots of locations how the inventory trade has developed from a Frankfurt inventory trade operator to a European monetary market infrastructure operator with a global presence inside 25 years since its personal IPO. “Without the IPO, we would have remained an office like other stock exchange operators for a long time.” The inventory trade’s enterprise figures, which Leithner defined with CFO Jens Schulte, present the inventory trade’s dependable development and an ever-broadening positioning.

Net gross sales elevated by three % to six billion euros, and the annual surplus additionally elevated to greater than two billion euros. There was headwind as a result of falling key rates of interest in Europe and the USA diminished curiosity earnings by round 200 million euros. But the comparatively quiet yr on the inventory market – regardless of all the joy surrounding Donald Trump – additionally diminished traders’ want for hedging on the inventory market. The trade’s sturdy development drivers have been its enterprise with the EEX vitality trade, which isn’t solely the market chief in Europe, but additionally does superb enterprise within the USA, Japan and now additionally in Brazil.

In the software program division, which was acquired two years in the past, main clients from the USA have been acquired, significantly within the fourth quarter. Another one will comply with shortly, as CFO Schulte introduced. Business with authorities bonds, digital securities and conventional securities buying and selling additionally developed very properly within the 2025 monetary yr. As has been the case not too long ago, the dividend is predicted to extend by an extra 20 cents to 4.20 euros per share. Together with the introduced purchases of personal shares for 500 million euros, a record-high nearly 1.3 billion euros of the excess of two billion euros will movement again to the shareholders.

The remaining cash will now movement into the whole takeover of the info and index firm ISS Stoxx in February and March. The inventory trade introduced on Thursday night time that it had agreed with the monetary investor General Atlantic to take over its 20 % stake for 1.1 billion euros. An preliminary public providing of the division, which was being examined on the identical time, was rejected because of the present market valuations on this phase.

The share worth of index supplier MSCI has accelerated its decline in latest days, from $620 final week to $510 on Thursday. Leithner emphasised the strategic significance of the info and indices enterprise, and the benefits {that a} full integration of ISS Stoxx would have by way of earnings, but additionally by way of the eradicated prices of operating your individual listed firm with all reporting obligations.

The inventory trade’s personal shares and money are additionally for use for the 5.3 billion euro (file) buy of the Spanish-British fund service supplier Allfunds. The inventory trade expects a overview interval by European authorities to take round a yr.

Leithner mentioned that there couldn’t be a extra tailored piece for really European additional improvement in an space reminiscent of funds, through which Europe performs a worldwide pioneering position. It underlines the inventory trade’s ambitions to powerfully develop the pan-European ecosystem within the monetary sector. The transaction is a part of the partnerships within the space of ​​digital securities, the cooperation with the European Central Bank on the digital euro, the sturdy place within the European ETF market and the trade’s position in settlement and custody, through which it provides companies throughout 60 international locations and lives capital market integration, additionally because the “Home of the Euro Yield Curve” as a central clearing home for European authorities bonds. For the years as much as 2028, the inventory trade is planning natural development of eight % per yr and, due to price self-discipline, stronger revenue development, and by 15 % for 2026.