New York, London Exchanges See Rebound in Listings After Crisis

By Chua Kong Ho

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Corporate listings are set to rebound as financial markets stabilize and companies seek funding, the heads of the New York and London exchanges said.

“You feel there’s a pretty big pipeline and a lot of pent- up demand,” NYSE Euronext Chief Executive Officer Duncan Niederauer said in an interview today. The supply of companies looking to list looks “very good” and will restart as financial markets stabilize, London Stock Exchange Group Plc CEO Clara Furse said. Neither CEO gave details.

NYSE Euronext, the world’s largest owner of stock exchanges, and rivals including the LSE, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., Deutsche Boerse AG are confronting lower share volume as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression drives traders out of the market. Trading on the Lisbon, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam stock markets slowed 15.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.

Both Niederauer and Furse spoke in interviews in Shanghai, where they are attending the Lujiazui Forum. NYSE Euronext has the support of Chinese regulators to list in Shanghai though there is “no timetable yet,” Niederauer said.

NYSE Euronext was formed in 2007, bringing together bourses including the New York Stock Exchange, London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange and markets in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

The company last year asked Chinese regulators to consider relaxing rules barring companies from listing shares on both the Shanghai Stock Exchange and overseas markets. The company is seeking to meet demand from issuers who want multiple stock listings and investors interested in overseas companies.

Chinese Listings

“If the market tone improves and Chinese companies are looking to the public markets in the U.S., I would expect we would win the majority of the listings,” said Niederauer.

Nasdaq OMX Group, the operator of the Nasdaq Stock market, expects 20 Chinese companies to list in U.S. exchanges over the next 12 months, the Wall Street Journal reported today, citing Robert McCooey, Nasdaq OMX’s senior vice president of new listings and capital markets.

PetroChina Co., the nation’s largest oil producer, and China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest telephone company by value, are among Chinese companies listed on the NYSE.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chua Kong Ho in Shanghai at kchua6@bloomberg.net