Euronext extends chief executive Stéphane Boujnah’s tenure until 2027

Stéphane Boujnah has been reappointed as head of Euronext for a further four years, with the former M&A banker promising further deals to bolster its position as Europe’s largest exchanges operator.

Boujnah, 59, will stay at Euronext until 2027, extending an eight-year tenure.

His new mandate from the board was confirmed on Wednesday, making him the longest-serving big stock exchange chief in Europe. The heads of the London Stock Exchange Group, Deutsche Börse and the Swiss exchange all joined their respective companies in 2018.

Boujnah, a former Santander and Deutsche Bank executive, joined Euronext in 2015 shortly after it had been spun out of Intercontinental Exchange. He has transformed the size of the company by snapping up European rivals, including the Dublin and Oslo stock exchanges and the €4.4bn purchase of Borsa Italiana.

“In order to increase the growth of the group we will work on organic projects but we will also do acquisitions. When there are options to consolidate exchanges in Europe . . . we will do that,” Boujnah told the Financial Times earlier this week.

Boujnah said he remained open to acquisition opportunities “in post trade, in funds distribution, in data, in forex, in power” but declined to name specific companies.

Euronext’s rival Deutsche Börse in April agreed to buy Danish investment management company SimCorp, valuing it at €3.9bn, underscoring how European exchange operators view fund services as a new avenue for growth.

Earlier this year, Euronext launched but later withdrew a bid for Spanish fund distribution company Allfunds.

“We decided not to proceed with this acquisition because we didn’t like the outcome of our due diligence, but clearly this is a sector where Deutsche Börse has invested significant resources,” Boujnah said. “This is a sector adjacent to our core business.”

Ian White, analyst at Autonomous Research, said the exchange needed to do a deal this year to convince the market of its growth. “Euronext’s shares have done badly against its peers over the last 15-16 months so [Boujnah] will be looking around for a way to boost growth. It’s really difficult to see it coming from somewhere else,” he added.

Boujnah’s reappointment will make him an influential figure in European policymaking over the coming years as Brussels tries to strengthen and unify its capital markets to make it more attractive to international investors.

Euronext’s top exchanges are in Amsterdam and Paris, which have in recent years threatened the London Stock Exchange’s position as the listing venue of choice for European companies.

EU officials are considering a range of measures to improve the region’s fragmented capital markets, including creating a real-time database of stock and bond trading information and simplifying the process for companies going public.

But Boujnah called on Brussels to improve supervision of European capital markets to provide a fuller view of the bloc’s financial services.

He added that officials should consider capital markets holistically and include all sectors from asset managers to exchanges, not just banks.

“We need to have a supervision that considers and encapsulates the vision of Europe being a continent of finance makers, and not only of users and consumers, just like a search engine,” Boujnah said.

The company on Tuesday said it would further diversify this year by launching a so-called dark pool, where investors can trade large blocks of shares without disclosing their moves to the market. Most off-exchange venues are run by brokers and large investment banks.

Euronext reported first-quarter revenues of €372mn on Tuesday, down 6 per cent compared with the same period last year.