EUROPE – Both Deutsche Boerse and Euronext have reported strong turnover figures for February.

Euronext said cash trading in February rose 22.2% to 12.6 million. The year-to-date figure was 26.6 million – or an average daily trade of 648,400 – a 20% rise in 2003 and a record.

Derivatives trading on Euronext.life rose 40% to 72 million contracts in the month – a record for February and the second busiest month ever on the platform.

Deutsche Boerse said equities turnover rose 50% last month. It said that a total of 84.7 billion euros in equities volume was traded on German stock exchanges – 50% higher than the year before month’s 56.5 billion euros. “Of this total, 79 billion euros was traded in German equities, and 5.7 billion euros in foreign equities.”

The bourse said that around 97% of the volume traded in German equities in February was posted on Xetra – and that some 5.9 million transactions were executed on Xetra in February, a rise of 21% over a year ago. Siemens was the most liquid DAX blue chip in February.

The Boerse’s Eurex derivatives exchange traded 81 million contracts in February, a rise of around 10% over February 2003’s 73.7 million contracts. “On average, approximately four million contracts were traded and cleared each day,” the bourse said.

The London Stock Exchange said last month that there were 4.76 million UK equity trades on the exchange in January – a 22% rise over the 3.91 million in January 2003. The total value of UK shares traded in the LSE in January was 209.7 billion pounds, up from 148.7 billion pounds last year.

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