BME Bids Farewell To A Record Year For The IBEX 35® With Growth In Trading Volume, Dividends, And Capital Increases

The IBEX® smashes its all-time high, rises 41% through November, and strings together three years among the best indices of the world’s stock markets
BME welcomes 14 new companies in the first eleven months of the year (three on the stock exchange and eleven on the growth markets) and capital increases grow by 80%
The Spanish stock market maintains a historical average return of 4.1%, among the best in Europe, after its second-highest figure for shareholder remuneration
In Fixed Income, corporate issues grow by 52% and the MARF surpasses 10 billion euros in outstanding balance for the first time

2025 has been a record year for returns for the IBEX 35®, which has spent three consecutive years among the best indices in global stock markets. It has also been a year of growth in various activity indicators such as trading volume, shareholder remuneration, and capital increases. These are some of the conclusions of the Market Report, prepared by BME, presented today at the Madrid Stock Exchange Palace by Bjørn Sibbern, Chairman of BME, and Juan Flames, CEO.

As of the end of November, the IBEX 35® achieves a 41% appreciation up to November, which rises near to 46% as of yesterday’s close, after surpassing its historical record and even reaching 17,000 points. It leads in returns among the main Western stock markets and, thanks to this rise, market capitalization exceeds one trillion euros and stands at 98% of GDP.

Shareholder remuneration has once again been one of the hallmarks of the Spanish stock market. Listed companies have distributed 38.7 billion euros to their shareholders through various remuneration formulas, the second-highest figure in the historical series. Of that amount, 37.7 billion corresponds to dividends, a higher figure than the total for 2024 with a month still to go before the end of the year. The average annual return of the Spanish stock market since 1986 stands at 4.1%, among the highest in Europe.

This year also saw increased stock market activity, with a 19% rise in trading volume through November, to 349 billion euros. The number of transactions grew by 7% to reach 29 million.

2025 has also been a year of new companies coming to Spain’s capital markets: three to the Stock Exchange and eleven by the end of November to BME’s growth markets (BME Growth and BME Scaleup), which now have 154 companies, a figure that could increase with the listings expected in December. Companies listed on these markets have raised more than €590 million in financing. This year, 14 new companies have also joined BME’s Pre-Market Environment.

In addition, in 2025 capital increases have grown by 80% to exceed 10.9 billion euros.

In Fixed Income, the standout is a 52% increase in corporate issues, to 79 billion euros, following the repatriation to the Spanish market of eleven issuers since 2020. This year the MARF surpassed 10 billion euros in outstanding balance for the first time, underscoring the market’s financing capacity.

In the Derivatives market, which recorded a 15% increase in trading of Equity Derivatives, it was a year of launching new services and functionalities, such as European-style stock options and the extension of trading hours for IBEX 35® futures, from eight in the morning to ten at night.

The post-trade area, including settlement, custody, and registry activities, also posted a strong year. It was a year characterized by preparations for the transition to the T+1 settlement cycle, which will come into force in the EU, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland in October 2027, and in which BME is leading the industry’s preparations with the launch of a Playbook and a Roadmap to help prepare for this change. In addition, a revamped settlement system went into production following the implementation of the so-called “Reform 3,” which will facilitate this transition.

It was also a year of new developments, such as the announcement that SIX will integrate all its Clearing activity into a single Central Counterparty Clearing House headquartered in Madrid.

Bjørn Sibbern, Chairman of BME, explained in his speech that “the harmonization of our trading platforms in Switzerland and Spain based on Aquis’s cutting-edge technology consolidates SIX’s position as an innovator in the stock exchange sector by enabling us to continue developing future technologies in-house. At the same time, it offers our clients simple access to the markets of Switzerland, the EU, and the United Kingdom, and ultimately to high liquidity, based on the principle of one plug, multiple trading venues.”

For his part, Juan Flames, CEO of BME, emphasized that “We need to strengthen our markets and to do so it is essential to bring retail investors back to the stock market. We must facilitate families’ direct investment in the markets, so they can contribute to companies’ growth, and a good way to do this would be to design instruments such as the well-known Swedish account that fiscally incentivize this transfer of funds from traditional savings products toward investment financial products.”