Competition Among Stock Exchanges: Are Listing Services Part of the Deal?

Abstract

Competition among exchanges is growing fast on trading services. Differently, competition for listing securities has so far been minimal, if not absent, especially in Europe. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the monopolistic position that many important and well renowned exchanges around the world still maintain on offering and pricing of listing services. We first try to clarify the content of listing services. We then quantify fees applied by different exchanges to companies according to their size. We consider both initial and annual fees. Our results show that US exchanges are more expensive for medium sized firms while EU markets apply higher fees to largest companies. Demutualization of stock exchanges did not lead to the expected reduction of listing fees. Many exchanges, particularly in the EU, are still taking advantage of their exclusive control position by applying premium price policies to largest companies in order to cross subsidize smaller companies.

Keywords: Listing services, listing costs, stock exchanges competition, admission fees, annual fees

JEL Classification: G20, G29, N20