Dublin’s historic exchange now a cog in a big machine
WITH all eyes on Covid 19 — not least its impact on global markets — a small but significant moment in the long history of financial trading in Dublin came and went.
It arrived in the unglamorous guise of an earnings call with Euronext CEO Stéphane Boujnah.
Euronext bought the Irish Stock Exchange — now called Euronext Dublin — in March 2018, so any semblance of an independent
Irish exchange is in reality a distant memory. But Boujnah signalled that all traces of that long-held independence are gone. Since the acquisition, the old Irish Stock Exchange was seen as something of a separate project from the overall Euronext system, as its costs were brought into line with the wider group. But he told analysts that even this distinction is over and Euronext Dublin very much a cog in a bigger machine.
Euronext has easily hit those cost saving targets of €8m over two years.
“As a matter of fact,” Boujnah told analysts, the savings came “one year ahead of the targeted deadline.”
“When it comes to Dublin, clearly, our ambition has not stopped with the €8m,” he said.
“But there is a moment where — I mean, to a certain extent, it’s an artificial perimeter that we are measuring. And now the company is completely integrated. And for practical reason, we don’t look at it anymore as a different entity. And therefore, we will stop monitoring that, not because we don’t have ambitions but because now it’s part of the core Euronext.”