Deutsche Börse AG turns 25

Deutsche Börse AG celebrated its 25 anniversary on the trading floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Monday. Numerous clients, regulators, former executive board and supervisory board members as well as employees joined the bell-ringing ceremony to honour this anniversary. On 11 December 1992, the former owners of the three independent companies – Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse AG, DTB Deutsche Terminbörse GmbH and Deutsche Kassenverein AG – opted to merge their businesses. The merger became effective on 1 January 1993, marking the foundation of Deutsche Börse AG. This created an integrated market infrastructure provider in Frankfurt and in Germany for the first time.

“European harmonisation plus digitisation were and are the cornerstones on which financial centre Frankfurt has been built. In the 1990s, the creation of Deutsche Börse as AG laid the foundation for boosting the financial centre’s international significance to a level corresponding to the important role the German real economy plays in Europe,” summarized Lutz Raettig, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Morgan Stanley Bank AG and former Chairman of the Exchange Council of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange for many years, in his laudatory speech.

“Over the past 25 years, Deutsche Börse has developed into Europe’s most important financial market infrastructure provider by far. The driving force behind this achievement was and is our vertically integrated business model that rests on efficient technology in all areas. On this basis we expanded globally and extended our business to include a wide variety of asset classes,” said Andreas Preuss, Deputy CEO of Deutsche Börse AG.

Some of the most important milestones in the company’s history are:

• Launch of electronic trading system (Xetra) as an equities trading platform in 1997;
• Foundation of Eurex in 1998 as a merger of Deutsche Terminbörse AG (DTB) and the Swiss futures exchange Soffex to create Europe’s largest futures exchange;
• Deutsche Börse AG’s IPO in February 2001 and inclusion of its share in the DAX blue chip index in 2002;
• Introduction of a central counterparty, first on the futures exchange in the 1990s and for Xetra in 2003;
• Merger of the German post-trading business with Luxembourg Cedel and subsequent 100% takeover of Clearstream in 2002;
• Foundation along with partners of STOXX index provider and full ownership acquired in 2015;
• Entry into foreign exchange with the takeover of Germany’s most successful fintech company 360T in 2015.

Video: 25 years of Deutsche Börse AG