In 2003, Euronext remained the leading European exchange by value and number of transactions in shares traded on an electronic orderbook. The turnover traded in shares through Euronext's electronic orderbook was €1,360 billion and the number of transactions rose to 141.6 million: up 9.6% on 2002.
In December, transactions in share products were up by 9% year-on-year, amounting to 11 million in total.
11.6 million transactions were registered in all cash products in December 2003, bringing the total number of cash trades on Euronext's cash markets over the year 2003 to 150 million, an increase of 8.3% on 2002. The average daily number of transactions in cash products was up 8.2% in 2003 compared to last year, reaching 585,960.
The availability of NSC®, Euronext's electronic cash trading system, was 99.9% over the year.
At the end of December 2003, the total market capitalisation of the 1,392 companies listed on Euronext markets was up 11.4% on last year, reaching €1,646 billion.
The Euronext 100 blue chip index and the Next 150 index were both up year-on-year, respectively by 12.7% and 32.6%.
Transactions in trackers were up 16.5% on 2002: a total of 422,580 transactions were completed over the year.
Derivatives products
Euronext.liffe, the international derivatives business of Euronext, traded a total of 695 million contracts in 2003, marginally lower than the 697 million contracts traded in 2002; this was due to a lower volatility and a related decrease in equity options. The notional value of transactions over the year represented €251 thousand billion (trillion), an increase of 37% on 2002. Therefore, during 2003 Euronext.liffe maintained its position as the world's second largest derivatives exchange by volume and by value.
Euronext.liffe's short-term interest rate products and commodity products posted record trading volumes in 2003. In short-term interest rate products, volume increased by 40 %, to 263 million contracts, compared with 188 million contracts in 2002. In this sector, the highest volume product was Euronext.liffe's Euribor future, up 30% on the previous year. Commodity products showed 17% growth year-on-year.
In 2003 Euronext.liffe traded 412 million equity product contracts, 251 million in individual equity products and 161 million in equity index products. Equity options traded over 245 million contracts, a decrease of 24% on 2002, due to lower volatility in the underlying cash market.
Volume for December 2003 was up 3% on December 2002, with 45.7 million contracts traded, with an average daily volume traded of 2.17 million contracts. Open interest stood at 79.2 million contracts on 31 December 2003.
LIFFE CONNECT® derivatives trading system has been available 99.9% of the time throughout 2003.
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