By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) -Aquis Exchange said it aims to be among Europe's top share trading venues within five years, as it reported higher annual earnings on Thursday.
Aquis CEO Alasdair Haynes said the company aimed to reach a market share of over 10% in three to five year's time, which he said would put it among the top three platforms in Europe.
Widely followed data from the Chicago exchange, Cboe Global Markets, on Thursday showed that Euronext has a month-to-date European market share of 23.3%, with Cboe Europe at 22.3%, Deutsche Boerse (ETR:DB1Gn) Xetra at 12%, and LSEG at 11%.
Aquis, which has share trading operations in London and Paris, had a pan-European share of 4.97% in December, rising to 5.46% in February this year.
"I think in the medium term that shows that we have every opportunity of getting to above 10% and becoming a top three player," Haynes told Reuters.
The company, which became a listed exchange in 2018, reported net revenue of 22.7 million pounds ($28.98 million) in 2023, up 13% on the prior year, with profit before tax of 5.2 million pounds, up 15%.
The Mansion House Compact, which involved a group of pension funds committing to invest up to 5% of their funds in UK growth companies by 2030, including those listed on Aquis, is "at this point in time rhetoric rather than something that is going to change things", Haynes said.
Haynes said education was needed to show investors that stocks, riskier than bonds favoured by pension funds, were an attractive option for creating wealth and a better bet for retail investors than bitcoin.
Government and regulators have begun addressing this.
"The debate has started. I think they are doing an excellent job, but these are tankers, they don't change quickly," Haynes said. "There's a massive education here that equities need to be made sexy again, it's simply that."
The government has set out draft rules for Pisces, a new trading platform that would allow private companies to offer shares and encourage a public listing later on.
LSEG is planning to launch such a platform, but Haynes said he was not convinced that Pisces was the right answer.
"I won't give anything away, but there are other mechanisms that can be used, but we are certainly looking at that," Haynes said.
($1 = 0.7834 pounds)