EurIPO® is a dataset with information about the IPOs on all the European stock exchanges since the ‘90s. The database focuses on the exchanges of the four main European economies: London Stock Exchange, Euronext, Deutsche Börse and Borsa Italiana. For these markets, the EurIPO collects a series of data from the listing prospectus.

London Stock Exchange (LSE): it is the most important exchange in Europe and, above all, it is the first one in terms of number of new issues. Beside the Official List, the LSE launched in 1995 the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) for small and medium enterprises. In 2005, the market value of LSE was more than 2.500 billion of Euro, with more than 3.000 listed companies and 341 IPOs, most of them on AIM. The LSE is also the most important market in Europe for international IPOs: one IPO out of four on this market in 2005 was made from a foreign company.

Euronext: born the 22nd of September 2000 from the merger of the Paris, Amsterdam and Bruxelles stock exchanges, nowadays it is a single ‘federal’ exchange, made of three markets with different rules and requirements: Eurolist, Marché Libre and Alternext. In 2005, there were more than 1.200 companies listed on these markets, with 56 IPOs and the privatisation of EDF and Gaz de France (respectively, 8 and 4 billion of Euro of market value). The total market value of Euronext was approximately 2.300 billions.

Deutsche Börse: the Frankfurt stock exchange is divided into three markets. The first two, Amtlicher and Geregelter, are “official” markets, with European rules and similar admission and ongoing requirements. The third one, Freiverkehr, was created, like Alternext and AIM, to facilitate the SME to go public; born in 2005, this market was choose by 8 firms, which are approximately half the number of all the IPOs on the deutsche exchange in the year. In 2005 there were approximately 750 firms listed, with a total market value of 1.000 billion Euro.

Borsa Italiana: it comprehends three markets: the main market (MTA), the technology companies market (MTax) and the Expandi, born in 2003 from the restructuring of the Mercato Ristretto and dedicated to SMEs. Expandi had a great success in 2005, with 5 IPOs on the total of 13, a number that confirm the positive trend of new issues. There were 282 companies listed in 2005 on the Borsa Italiana, with a total market value of 670 billions of Euro.

Other exchanges: BME (Bolsas y Mercados Espanoles) integrates the stock exchanges of Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia. In the last three years there were only 5 IPOs on BME, which has a total market value of approximately 800 billion of Euro.

Swiss exchange (SWX), with 14 IPOs in the last three years, 4 of them from international companies.

OMX, with a structure similar to Euronext, is a confederation of 6 national exchanges (Stockholm, Copenaghen, Helsinhi, Tallin, Riga and Vilnius), with a total market value of 680 billions of Euro. The most active markets for IPOs are the Swedish and the Danish markets.

Among the other exchanges there are Wiener Börse, Athens Exchange, Warsaw Stock Exchange, Oslo Børs, Irish Stock Exchange, Bourse de Luxembourg, Cyprus Stock Exchange, Istanbul Stock Exchange e Moskow Interbank Currency Exchange.

These markets were recently founded and often did not have any IPO: Iceland Stock Exchange, Ljubljana Stock Exchange, Malta Stock Exchange, Prague Stock Exchange, Budapest Stock Exchange, Bulgarian Stock Exchange, Bratislava Stock Exchange, Bucharest Stock Exchange, The Zagreb Stock Exchange, Montenegro Stock Exchange, Tirana Stock Exchange, Belgrade Stock Exchange, Moldova Stock Exchange, Ukrainan Stock Exchange, Macedonian Stock Exchange, Banja Luka Stock Exchange, Armenian Stock Exchange, Georgian Stock Exchange e Baku Stock Exchange.