London has overtaken Paris to regain its crown as Europe’s largest stock market.
According to the Bloomberg Index, the market value of stocks in London is now £2.39 trillion ($2.888.4 trillion), compared to Paris’s $2.887.5 trillion.
It comes after the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been boosted in recent months by British energy giants BP and Shell, which have seen their values rise from surging oil prices.
Meanwhile, Paris has seen nearly $270 billion wiped off the combined market values of luxury brands.
The three largest companies on the CAC 40, the French stock index equivalent of the FTSE in London – LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, L’Oréal, and Hermès International – are down 21%, 5% and 10% respectively.
The London Stock Exchange lost top spot to Paris last autumn, as measured by market capitalisation. But, a year on, calculations show that the size of the London Stock Market is now $2,888.4 billion, compared with $2,887.5 billion for Paris.
Julian Jessop Economics Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs pointed to the new figures on X, writing: “No sign of a significant hit from #Brexit”.
Mr Jessop continued: “London has regained its ‘crown’ from Paris as Europe’s largest stockmarket. This is pretty meaningless (mainly about the types of companies quoted in the two centres), but that didn’t stop Remainers making a big deal when the reverse happened!”
Jason Hollands, Chief Executive of Bestinvest, said: “While it makes a nice headline and will likely fuel a social media ding-dong between people with strong views on both sides of the Brexit debate, it has no impact for investors.
“The relative sizes of equity markets will jostle around, with the two major factors being exchange rate movements and differences in the mix of sectors that each market is exposed to and how they are performing at any given time.
“The UK market has a significant weighting to energy and commodities so the recent resurgence in oil prices has helped bolster its value. That’s ultimately down to Saudi Arabia and Russia production cuts, not domestic factors.”
Source: Bloomberg
