THE bitter feud between the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and its rival Euronext erupted again last night when the company that owns Hoare Govett, the City stockbroker, said that it would pull its own shares off the London market.
ABN Amro, one of the LSE’s biggest customers, said the costs and requirements of listing its ordinary shares on the exchange “outweighed the benefits”.
The Dutch bank said that it was also pulling off the Frankfurt, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Zurich and Singapore stock exchanges. The bank said that its listing costs amounted to roughly “a couple of million euros”. ABN’s shares will continue to be listed on Euronext, which runs the Amsterdam exchange — the world’s oldest stock market — as well as on the New York exchange.
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The announcement immediately reignited the ongoing feud between the LSE and Euronext. The Exchange and Euronext have a history of strife dating back to 2001, when Euronext snapped up Liffe, the London financial futures market, from under the LSE’s nose.
The rival exchanges have fought hard in Amsterdam, where both exchanges are competing head to head to become the market leader in Dutch shares. Both exchanges have openly accused each other of manipulating their respective markets to flatter trading volumes and thus attract new customers.
In May the LSE launched its own dealing service in leading Dutch stocks, Eurosets, which was designed to poach Euronext’s business.
Rumours circulated that the LSE was inflating volumes, either by special deals being offered to switch to the new service or by blocks of shares being traded back and forth by friendly banks. The LSE reacted with fury, with other sources claiming Euronext was manipulating the market itself.
A spokesman for ABN Amro said of the delisting: “We are not playing games. If that was the case we would not be withdrawing from other markets too.”
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A spokesman for the LSE underlined that ABN’s shares could still be traded through the London exchange via the LSE’s Eurosets product. ABN’s move was “not an issue”, he claimed.