London recaptured its title as Europe’s largest stock market from Paris – only to see the London Stock Exchange forced to halt trading in smaller shares after technical problems yesterday.
The combined market capitalisation of company listings in London is now $2,888.4bn (£2,373bn) vs Paris’s $2,887.5bn, according to an index compiled by Bloomberg.
London’s valuation has been boosted by the rising price of oil and companies such as Shell and BP.
The fortunes of Paris have been dented by China’s economic slowdown. Luxury fashion firms such as LVMH, L’Oréal, Hermès and Kering have had their shares fall as demand from Chinese consumers has fallen.
London had lost its status as Europe’s biggest stock market last November as post-pandemic demand for luxury products boomed and the French stock market valuations rocketed.
Critics of Brexit pointed to the loss of its title as further evidence of the wisdom of leaving the European Union. Its reputation suffered further blows as major companies such as computer chip designer Arm plc opted to list its shares in New York while other firms chose to de-list in London and go to the US.
The London Stock Exchange (LSEG) lost some of the shine of regaining it when a system “incident” halted trading in hundreds of shares.
The incident hit shares in smaller companies – including the online fashion group Asos, polling company YouGov, food delivery firm Deliveroo, drinks firm FeverTree and Metro Bank – but forced an early end to trading.
The LSEG said it was investigating an incident and that only FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and International Order Book, which deals with some international shares, were available for trading.
The FTSE 100 closed down 1.17 per cent on the day. It said the shares affected would close at their halted prices.
“[The incident] will catch the attention of investors, people will want to have a quick answer to what was going on in order to maintain confidence,” Fiona Cincotta, markets analyst at City Index, said.
“The quicker we can get some news on what caused the incident, the quicker the market will be able to move on,” she said. “We may see a little bit of volatility at the open.”
In 2019, the London Stock Exchange suffered an almost two-hour outage that hit FTSE 100 and mid-cap stocks, which LSEG said was caused by a “technical software issue”. It also suffered an outage in 2021 which knocked out some of its services for five hours.
The incident happened on a busy day in the corporate earnings season. LSEG’s own shares, which are listed on the FTSE 100, traded regularly, and closed up 1.88 per cent
