ABSTRACT
The experience of the United Kingdom in the 1970s, when the numbers of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the London Stock Exchange collapsed (see Davis, Chapter 7), was not unique: the phenomenon was repeated across Europe. Indeed, the concerns about financing ‘gaps’ and about the barriers to independent growth of the small or medium-sized enterprise were common across European economies. In this chapter we seek to explore some examples of the various experiments in innovative arrangements for the listing of equities within Europe. In particular, we look at two continental European equities markets: France and Italy. These are chosen because they represent differing traditions of financial systems and differing historical frameworks of equity trading.
