London Stock Exchange: Value Of SETS Trades Up 107% In May - New Records Set Across Exchange’s Markets

Trading on the London Stock Exchange’s markets set new records during May 2006. The average daily value traded on SETS reached a new high of £7.6 billion, up 107 per cent on the value traded during May last year. The average daily number of trades was also a record, an increase of 87 per cent to 375,354. For the month as a whole, there were 7.9 million trades on SETS with a combined value of £158.8 billion.

May accounted for the three busiest days ever on SETS by both number of trades and value traded. On 23 May, the busiest day, the number of trades on SETS exceeded 500,000 for the first time, and the value traded reached a record £9.8 billion.

Included in the SETS figures, both SETSmm and the International Order Book (IOB) had an excellent month. The average daily number of trades on SETSmm increased 183 per cent on May 2005 to 81,497, while the average daily value traded increased 169 per cent to £676.8 million. The average daily value traded on the IOB increased 432 per cent to £346.0 million, and the average daily number of trades on the IOB more than trebled to 3,700.

Trading in ETFs also continued to grow very strongly. The total value traded during the month grew 214 per cent on May 2005 to a record £1.9 billion. The total number of ETF trades, meanwhile, increased 239 per cent to 32,071.

The value traded in covered warrants and structured products during the month was £156.0 million, up 45 per cent from May last year. The total number of trades was up 209 per cent to 11,861.

During May, there were five IPOs on the Main Market raising £1.2 billion between them. This included one international IPO, raising £128.6 million. There were 31 IPOs on AIM during the month, which raised a total of £1.2 billion.

So far this year, the Exchange has attracted 169 IPOs raising a total of £9.8 billion between them, more than twice the £3.9 billion raised in the first five months of 2005. This total comprises 36 Main Market IPOs, which have raised £5.1 billion between them, 130 AIM IPOs, which have raised £4.2 billion between them, and 3 GDRs on the Professional Securities Market which raised £527.3 million.

RNS, the Exchange's service for the dissemination of company news, transmitted an average of 744 announcements per day, up 27 per cent on May 2005. An average of 282 news and results announcements were disseminated each day, representing an 87 per cent share of all company news and results announcements made in the UK.

There were 21 trading days during May 2006, one more than in May 2005.