The operator is 70% of VP Securities, the settlement and central depository of the Danish market.
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The pan-European market operator Euronext announced Thursday that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire 70% of the shares of the Danish central depositary VP Securities, for an amount of around 150 million euros.
“The proposed price for 100% of the shares is 1.12 billion Danish kroner (about 150 million euros)”, an amount that will be financed with existing Euronext resources, the group said in a statement.
“Euronext will open an offer to all the remaining shareholders, under the same terms and conditions,” added the stock market operator, who plans to finalize the transaction at the start of the third quarter of 2020.
VP Securities is the settlement and central depository for the Danish market, an organization that links the companies issuing financial securities who deposit their securities there and the financial intermediaries who keep these securities on behalf of investors or their own account.
“In the current circumstances, we believe that the best way to prepare for the post-health crisis is to operate strategic movements during the health crisis” in order to be “better positioned when[elle] will be over, “Stéphane Boujnah, director general of Euronext, told AFP.
This acquisition also makes it possible to “significantly diversify our revenues even if the first quarter of 2020 went well in terms of sources of revenue related to the volumes of transactions that were significant,” he added.
All the more so in terms of synergies, “it is a platform which is extremely close in its model, in its technology, to a company that we own in Norway, VPS”, underlined Mr. Boujnah.
Euronext wishes in particular to be more present in back-office activities, one of the axes of its strategic plan “Let’s grow together 2022”, because these are not subject to the volatility of transaction volumes.
“Up to now, + post-trade + revenues have represented around 17% of Euronext revenues. With these operations, they will represent 23%, “said Mr. Boujnah.
Finally, after that of the Oslo Stock Exchange in June 2019 and the Scandinavian electricity exchange Nord Pool in January, the acquisition of VP Securities “allows us to deploy even more strongly in the Scandinavian peninsula and in Denmark” with a “Share of the revenues generated by this region in the Euronext group” which “will reach 25%”, he stressed.
In addition to the Norwegian market, Euronext currently oversees the Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Dublin stock exchanges.
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