[ I N T E R V I E W | S T É P H A N E B O U J N A H ]
Hayley McDowell : Euronext had a prolific year in terms of acquisitions and investment in 2017 , as well as several major product launches . How are those performing ? Stéphane Boujnah : Euronext is fundamentally different from what it was a year ago and 2017 was a transformational year for the company with major projects both completed and ongoing . We acquired FastMatch in August 17 and expanded our offering into global forex markets . FastMatch has cutting-edge technology as the fastest growing communication network in foreign exchange markets . The good news is that the business side there is developing well . We are cross-selling the FastMatch offering into European markets with an increasing part of that business now being rolled out to major European bank centres . Secondly , we acquired the Irish Stock Exchange ( ISE ), which we announced in November and will close hopefully in March this year . This is a very interesting acquisition because not only is it a great company with a superb management team in a country with significant positive growth prospects , but it ’ s an acquisition that provides several benefits to us . It demonstrates the Euronext federal model is attractive to independent exchanges that want to keep their identity within the federal governance model . In addition , this acquisition makes us less dependent on volume driven businesses . ISE is a global leader in debt and fund listing , so with that business we are less exposed to volatility trading and more independent from volumes .
The third pillar of our strategy expressed last year was that we significantly invested in non-volume rate businesses to structure a comprehensive offering of corporate services with several bolt-on acquisitions . These were made in order to provide our issuers clients with a range of tools to assist them with market challenges . We are very happy with all of the acquisitions and investments we made last year , and so far they are all performing very well . There were other projects that were very important for Euronext in 2017 , including our clearing deal with LCH SA where we swapped our
“ Euronext is fundamentally different from what it was a year ago and 2017 was a transformational year for the company ”.
2.3 % stake in LCH Group for 11.1 % stake in LCH SA , and we signed a ten year clearing of financial securities agreement . This is not as good as owning LCH SA as we tried to do at the beginning of 2017 , but the situation is much better than where we were at the end of 2016 . With all of these acquisitions we have paved the way for an even stronger future at Euronext .
HM : Euronext also ventured into major agreements with firms across the industry like Morningstar and Algomi . How have those projects developed ? SB : There were several joint agreements we entered into last year , including with Morningstar where we are developing European indices for blue chips . We recently launched the Morningstar Eurozone 50 index , and the first futures contracts on that index were launched in January . This was critical ambition for us and the deal with Morningstar was all about the development of new indices so we could trade them . With Algomi , things are going well and the European multilateral trading facility ( MTF ) is live and approved by the Financial Conduct Authority ( FCA ), and approval from the US regulator is ongoing . We are now in the commercial phase of that project , bringing more and more participants to the platform . On top of those projects , we have also launched regulatory services to support clients with MiFID II reporting requirements . Our two services including the approved publication arrangement ( APA ) and approved reporting mechanism ( ARM ) are continuing to service our clients and attract new business .
Euronext also entered the blockchain world . But we ’ ve tried to do
52 // TheTrade // Spring 2018