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Paris stock market more valuable than London’s for first time
Less investment due to Brexit and the devaluation of pound sterling against the dollar are key reasons cited
The value of shares in the Paris stock market exceeded that of London for the first time since a comparison, in US dollars, was established between major markets by the Bloomberg financial news company in 2003.
At the start of the week, the total capitalisation of Paris’s markets (the value of all the shares on the market) was $2,823billion, while that of London was $2,821billion.
Les Echos newspaper, the main financial newspaper in France, pointed out that while Paris has slowly seen an increase in its capital, the main shift has been a fall in that of London. In June 2014, for example, London came in at $4,000billion while Paris registered $2,234billion.
Reasons for the decline of London include Brexit making it less attractive to invest in the UK and the devaluation of sterling against the dollar, especially during the Truss prime ministership.
At the same time Paris has seen the value of some of its biggest companies, especially in luxury goods, rise significantly.
An example is the LVMH Moët Hennessy handbags to champagne conglomerate, which over the last three years, has seen its share price rise by 74.6%.
Ironically the capitalisation shift comes at a time when the main London index (a list of the biggest companies) the FST 100 is outperforming the main Paris index, the CAC 40.
In the last month the FST 100 gained 13.7% in price terms while the CAC 40 gained 12.8%.
While the numbers coming from the stock exchange are just numbers, and have little effect on the daily lives of most people, they also might reflect the start of a shift from Britain being the undisputed financial capital of Europe.
In the future the shift in the capitalisation top spot could be seen as the moment when it became obvious that London is now just one of a number of significant financial capitals in the region, along with Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris.
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