Amsterdam stock exchange 'early winner' of Brexit deal

Equity trading on the Amsterdam stock exchange has for the first time overtaken London. The trading volume in the Dutch capital has quadrupled within one month in January as a result of Brexit.

It did not come as a surprise that Amsterdam overtook London as the largest trading center in Europe. After the UK left the European Union, trading platforms such as CBOE and Turquoise moved their European equity trading from the London stock exchange to those in Amsterdam and Paris.

In January, an average of EUR 9.2 billion in shares was traded in Amsterdam per day, writes the British business newspaper The Financial Times (FT) on Thursday. That trading volume is more than four times as much as in December.

In London, much less was traded than before Brexit. The trade volume fell to 8.6 billion euros in January. This means that Amsterdam is now the largest European center for equity trading.

Turquoise, a trading platform, moved because Brussels does not grant the British stock exchange regulator the same status after Brexit as regulators in the European Union. In other words, the EU and the UK do not recognize each other's trade rules.

Without a so-called "equivalence clause", European trading platforms had to move to Amsterdam, Dublin, and Paris. In total, about 6.5 billion euros in deals with it disappeared from London.

According to Bloomberg, a news agency, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs actively lobbied to entice financial trading firms to relocate there. In addition, managers of those companies would be driven around Amsterdam free of charge for appointments with regulators, real estate agents and executives of flash trading companies.

CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) and FT declared Amsterdam the "early winner of Brexit". Analyst Anish Puaar of Rosenblatt Securities remains positive about the situation on the London stock exchange. He calls it "symbolic" that London is losing its status as a European trading center, but also sees it as an opportunity for the British to "find their own trading niche."