Insights from Stock Exchange Day 2024

On the evening of 19 June, the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) held the 41st edition of its annual flagship event, the Stock Exchange Day, at the Luxembourg Philharmonie.  

To celebrate another successful event, we take a look back at some of the key messages brought forward by the expert speakers over the course of the jam-packed event.

Rethink local, unlock markets

This year’s edition explored untapped opportunities in Luxembourg’s financial centre and discussed what more the financial ecosystem can do to facilitate financing for European companies, foster an investment culture and boost trading in Luxembourg. The audience was asked to rethink what is possible in Luxembourg in terms of capital markets activities and explore what it would take to turn Luxembourg into a preferred destination for company listings and trading. 

In one way or another, all the speakers addressed the “Rethink local, unlock markets” theme and shared their perspectives as for how to make Luxembourg attractive and competitive as a capital markets hub in the long term.

At the centre of it all was the untapped potential of the financial ecosystem in Luxembourg and the need to work together to bring Luxembourg’s financial centre to new heights.

The President of LuxSE’s Board of Directors Alain Kinsch then took to the stage to share his views on the role that LuxSE has played and will continue to play in strengthening the financial centre’s offering and competitiveness. 

“We are stepping up our efforts to develop our trading offering and have several innovative projects in the field of data. But it is not only about us. Supporting the Luxembourg financial centre is an integrated part of our mission. As the only exchange in Luxembourg, we have a responsibility to contribute to strengthening financial activities locally and promoting the financial centre globally.”

Next on stage was Luxembourg Minister of Finance Gilles Roth, who emphasised the strengths that Luxembourg has to offer on an international level and the role the country can play in contributing to making Europe’s capital markets more competitive. 

“Luxembourg is home to a unique cross-border financial centre ecosystem. I am convinced that by building on our local expertise we can help unlock the full potential of European capital markets.”

 

Building on existing strengths

Then, it was time for LuxSE’s CEO Julie Becker to take to the stage for a series of experts interviews to explore untapped opportunities for Luxembourg’s financial centre. 

During her time on stage, Miao Li highlighted the current strengths of Luxembourg’s debt capital markets before sharing her views of how to best build on these strengths to further develop Luxembourg’s position beyond being the destination of choice for international bond listing. The debt origination and syndication expert called for the ecosystem to work together to mobilise investors already present in the Grand Duchy and attract new investors, often considered the missing piece in Luxembourg’s ecosystem. 

Bringing the conversation from bond listing to bond trading, Julie Becker called CEO of Euwax AG Dragan Radanovic up on stage.

Euwax AG is part of Boerse Stuttgart Group and LuxSE’s partner and prime liquidity provider for LuxXPrime, a window on LuxSE’s trading platform dedicated to retail-sized bond trading. Dragan Radanovic shared his views on how trading can contribute to making Luxembourg more competitive as a financial centre and how to put retail investors on an equal footing with institutional players.

The trading operations expert then highlighted the ways in which LuxXPrime serves to activate market participants and to increase the participation of retail investors. Today, LuxXPrime offers a broad product range of more than 1,500 bonds, including 300 sustainable bonds, all available in retail-sized tickets.

 

Exploring untapped opportunities

After covering bond listing and bond trading, for her third conversation, Julie Becker moved to the topic of company listing. To hear the perspective of one of the companies listed at LuxSE, she invited John Penning, Managing Director of Luxempart, to an open discussion on stage.

Luxempart is an investment company that has been listed on LuxSE for more than 30 years, and which invests mainly in European SMEs.

John Penning shared Luxempart’s experience as a listed company in Luxembourg and highlighted the importance of boosting liquidity and trading through incentives.

Bringing this thought-provoking segment towards its conclusion, Julie Becker placed the spotlight on the financing needs of European SMEs today and invited CEO of the European Investment Fund (EIF) Marjut Falkstedt to the stage.

Marjut Falkstedt explained how, over the past 30 years, the EIF has supported Europe's SMEs by helping them access finance. Marjut Falkstedt then moved on to highlight the need to strengthen the link to public markets once the SMEs are ready to grow further and requiring access to additional financing, and the role that stock exchanges play in this process.

                

Lifting the level of ambition

The interviews with the market experts closed with a surprise video message from Gerard Hoffmann, CEO for Luxembourg at Proximus and Member of the Board of Directors of FEDIL. He shared his ambitious vision of what Luxembourg’s capital markets could become and delivered a wake-up call encouraging the financial ecosystem to come together to turn Luxembourg into a hub for venture capital and start-ups, and unlock more opportunities for the country. 

Julie Becker ended the segment by summarising the main messages shared by the market experts. 

“Luxembourg is a leading destination for the listing of international debt instruments. The question now is how the Luxembourg financial ecosystem can build on this strength and develop its trading activities. If we succeed in this, the financial centre can play an essential role in facilitating the much-needed financing for both Luxembourg and European companies and in particular SMEs. A lot of the ingredients are there already, and if we work together collectively across the financial ecosystem, we believe Luxembourg can play a central role in strengthening European capital markets. We need to create an investment culture in Europe and make it easier for European savers to put their money to work for the European economy, and all financial centres need to join in on this effort.”