Latin American Capital Markets

408 HANNES TAKACS AND KINGA KORCSMAROSTable 12-6 | Small and Medium Enterprise Markets in EuropeCountryNumber(year of of listed Marketestablishment) City New market companies cap (€)Belgium (2000) Brussels NASDAQ Europe 50 8 bnCzech Republic (1999) Prague Prague SE New Market 0 0Denmark (2000) Copenhagen KVX Growth Market 13 I bnFinland (1998) Helsinki HEX New Markt 16 437mFrance (1996) Paris Nouveau Marche (Euronext) 164 I5bnGermany (1997) Frankfurt Neuer Markt 327 50 bnGreece (2001) Athens Athens SE (NEXA) I 50mIceland (2001) Reykjavik ICEX Alternative Market 3 472mIreland (1997) Dublin Developing Companies Market 4 34 mItaly (1999) Milan Nuovo Mercato 45 I3bnMalta (2001) Valletta Alternative Companies List I 28mNetherlands (1997) Amsterdam EuroNM Amsterdam (Euronext) 9 268mPoland (2000) Warsaw Warsaw SE (SiTECH/TechWIG) 21 7 bnSlovak Republic (2000) Bratislava Bratislava SE New Market 0 0Spain (2000) Madrid Nuevo Mercado 13 I7bnSwitzerland (1999) Zurich Swiss Exchange New Market 15 4 bnSweden (1998) Stockholm Stockholmsborsen New Market 22 291mSweden (2000) Stockholm Nordic Growth Market 55 301mUnited Kingdom (1995) London AIM 629 I9bnUnited Kingdom (1999) London TechMARK 246 693 bnSource: Grant Thornton (2002).Medium-size Business] Questionnaire strongly indicate that SMEs are benefiting fromcoming to the market." Another study, carried out by Grant Thornton (2002) on newmarkets in Europe, ranks the perceived benefits of flotation only by medium-size companies.According to this study, 41 percent named "availability of capital" as the mostimportant benefit of being listed (see table 12-7).Table 12-8 shows Grant Thornton's (2002) ranking of the barriers to flotation.More than 40 percent of the SMEs in the sample considered company size to be themain barrier to listing.They believed they needed to be larger to float. For many companies,floating lacks relevance, and they find the procedure far too time-consuming.New markets have sprung up across Europe over the past few years, althoughsome of these markets are so young that they only have a few, if any, companies listed.The most active European markets are AIM, NASDAQ Europe, Neuer Markt, NordicGrowth Market, Nouveau Marche, Nuovo Mercato, and techMARK. The indices ofthese markets grew steadily during 1999 when the technology and dotcom sectorCopyright © by the Inter-American Development Bank. All rights reserved.For more information visit our website: www.iadb.org/pub