2024-08-09 18:53:06
The number is getting smaller and smaller stock exchanges companies that carry out the transactions in the market sharessince most orders come from foreign funds with registered offices in London, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Frankfurt and New York.
The foreign orders are executed by the brokerage subsidiaries of the four systemic banks and two large private AHEPEY, such as the only listed company in the sector, Euroxx, and Pantelakis AHEPEY.
According to the data presented by “N” today, in July this year the centralization of transactions in the Greek stock market increased.
In a total of 4.348 billion euros that were the transactions in July, the first ten AHEPEYs, out of a total of 41 active in Athens, collected 89.66% of the orders. The remaining 31 ACHEPEY shared only 10.34% of transactions.
If we add to the first 10 stock exchanges and the three largest remote members (remote members), the percentage of centralization approaches 97%, which means that the market share managed by the purely private AHEPEY, which no longer exceeds 22, has been reduced to 3% .
The financial situation
This year’s course of the domestic stock exchanges is judged to be positive, as the increase in transactions has boosted the turnover of the members of SMEXA.
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According to industry players, the results of the last two years fluctuate at such levels that the companies achieve some limited profits – and this through a particularly frugal management and control of administrative costs.
In general, the sector, which went through intense adventures during the previous decade, seems to be surviving, while for those (few in number) companies facing serious financial issues, the Securities and Exchange Commission has already made provision so that their possible failure does not cause problems for customers and collateral capital .
In particular, the domestic AHEPEYs took advantage last year of the significant increase in the average daily value of transactions on the Athens Stock Exchange, while at the same time some of them benefited both from the rise in the valuations of Greek shares on the A.X. (e.g. profits in their own investment portfolios, increased commission income from managing client portfolios) as well as from offering services in the investment banking area (e.g. issuance advisors, underwriting capital increases, contribution to corporate bond issuances and in placements, etc.).
Although the level of trading activities has not yet returned to pre-crisis levels (after all, the number of ACPs was much higher then compared to today), the majority of companies in the sector have returned to profitability over the last two years, after from a long “stone” period that the industry went through during the previous decade.
Another positive development for the sector is that the first quarter of this year has started very satisfactorily at all levels, with the General Index climbing to higher levels, the value of transactions expanding further, but also with important developments such as e.g. the public offering of AIA, the divestment of TX) by Piraeus Bank and the issuance of corporate bonds by Autohellas and Intralot.
The course of the industry from the distant 1999 until today
Today there are 27 Greek stock exchanges in operation, when in 1999 there were 91 in operation.
It is estimated that 60% of the employees – who had exceeded 6,000 in 1999 – in the brokerage firms were laid off between 2000-2009, due to the anemic turnover of the market and the large number of companies in the sector.
Today, in a brokerage firm there are two main categories of employees.
On the one hand, there are the dealers, i.e. the executives who are in front of the monitors and are responsible for executing the orders to buy and sell shares that they receive from their customers. Dealers are mostly paid a basic salary by the stock exchange.
The second category of employees are the brokers, who are the intermediaries between the special negotiators (dealers) and their counterparties – customers.
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Their profit comes from charging their clients for their services.
Let us clarify that the majority of brokers came from the thousands of AELDEs that were created from 1999 onwards where they transferred their portfolios to brokerage firms in order to survive professionally.
Most of the small stock exchanges are kept alive either with very few private clients or because the main shareholders do not wish to close them down and often finance their activity.
The goal of Greek brokerages is common: to reduce costs, as private brokerages keep only the transmission of orders and transfer the costly part of services, such as the securities fund and clearing, to the large brokerages that are subsidiaries of banks.
The acceleration of alliances is mainly promoted by small family brokerages, which are in talks with bank subsidiaries and offer a portfolio of clients worth from 5 to 30 million euros.