Europe’s capital market must become ‘more resilient’ after Brexit, stock exchange report finds
Europe's capital markets must become “stronger and more resilient” after Brexit to realise the economic potential of the continent's businesses, a London Stock Exchange report has found
The stock exchange has identified the 1000 fastest-growing high-growth potential firms in Europe in a bid to inspire other businesses and entrepreneurs.
The top 100 firms have grown by 102 per cent on average in the past three years and innovation has has also reached a high, with nearly 10,000 patents and registered trademarks across the 1,000 companies.
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But industry leaders said the European Commission's Capital Market Unions (CMU) plan for more integration of cross-border markets was becoming more crucial.
Vice-chair of the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee, Brian Hayes, said the capital markets had not made the “enormous leap we would have hoped for” when the CMU was launched in 2014 to address Europe's investment gap.
Chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe Simon Lewis said: “The overarching goal of CMU – that Europe's capital markets become deeper, better integrated and more diversified – remains so important.
“With Brexit on the horizon, minimising fragmentation of Europe's capital markets is more important than ever.”
CEO of the Centre for European Policy Studies Karel Lannoo said Europe was struggling to attract major companies, highlighting Spotify's decision to list in the US.
He said: “The increasingly likely advent of a chaotic Brexit in Europe's largest capital market will not make Europe more attractive.”
Anne Sander MEP, from the European Parliament's economic and monetary committee, said: “In the context of Brexit, the EU has to devote particular attention to the CMU initiative, which is even more important given that the UK is set to depart in 2019.
“We have to make our capital markets stronger and more resilient.”
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Romania and Hungary laid claim to the fastest-growing companies on average while German firms held the most patents and trademarks and the most entrants – 160.
The manufacturing and engineering sector was the largest represented in the report closely followed by food and drink.