ABSTRACT
We provide some details on what are now the two largest capital markets in Europe, the UK’s and Germany’s.
The United Kingdom
The London Stock Exchange saw record volumes traded on its international and domestic markets during 1999 – with international business up 10.1 per cent by value and domestic business up 36 per cent. Yet the year, and indeed a number of recent years, have not been as impressive for small-as for large-caps. The UK small-caps picked up gained value rapidly in 1995/8, and as a result they competed almost at par with large-caps. Morgan Stanley’s all-cap index for the UK rose 93 per cent from 1995-2000, whereas the small-cap index rose 70 per cent. But much of the gain in the small-cap index was already achieved by the middle of 1998, and it has only recently begun to rise again. More importantly, much of the gains were actually in companies that were much larger than the average SME.
