According to a report published on Wednesday 26 November by the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), in 2025 the European Union has only made a modest reduction in its competitive gap with the world’s major capital markets. Despite record bond issues and a surge in private capital, the organisation notes structural weaknesses, sluggish IPOs and persistent market fragmentation.
European companies placed an unprecedented volume of bonds, bringing the proportion of their financing directly from the markets to around 13%. IPOs, on the other hand, fell by 23%, while they rose by between 20% and 60% in the United States, China, Japan and Australia.
Furthermore, the EU’s capital markets remain underdeveloped, representing just 3% of the EU’s GDP, compared with 8% in the United States. The transfer of loans has also slowed, with securitised products accounting for just 1.6% of loans outstanding in the first half of 2025, compared with 7.5% in the US.
However, Europe remains the world’s leading market for Significant Risk Transfer (SRT) transactions.
Finally, according to the report, intra-EU integration has improved, driven by an increase in cross-border holdings of portfolio assets and a slight rise in mergers and acquisitions within the EU.
Only 6% of equity capital raised in the EU was outside the stock exchange of the country where the company is based, compared with a stable level of 10-14% twenty years ago.
See the AFME report: https://aeur.eu/f/jo2 (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)