The first half of 2025 has seen record activity in debt listings across all Euronext markets. More than 7,400 new bonds were listed, raising over €2.1 trillion in capital. This strong performance reflects high issuance volumes across all jurisdictions, supported by a broad and diverse base of issuers including financial institutions, corporates, sovereigns and supranational entities.

Euronext also reinforced its global leadership in sustainable finance, with over 330 ESG bonds listed in H1 2025 alone, raising more than €130 billion. Since 2021, nearly half of the funds raised through ESG bond issuances have come from bonds listed on Euronext.

This strong momentum is underpinned by three key drivers:

1. A more favourable interest rate environment
   Successive rate cuts by the European Central Bank have significantly lowered the cost of capital, encouraging issuers to come to market and secure funding on improved terms.

2. Ongoing refinancing needs
   Issuers across sectors have returned to the market to refinance upcoming maturities, lock in lower borrowing costs, or optimise their capital structures.

3. Euronext’s continued support for issuers
   Our teams have worked closely with market participants to streamline the listing process, enable seamless cross-border execution, and provide enhanced visibility, flexibility and responsiveness to meet evolving issuer needs.

Issuers have been well received by the market. Most transactions were significantly oversubscribed, reflecting strong investor demand and constructive secondary market conditions. This environment supported smooth execution and, in many cases, pricing inside initial guidance.

Spotlight on key issuances in H1 2025

The breadth of activity across Euronext’s locations is reflected in several landmark transactions:

• A2A raised €500 million through the first EU Green Bond ever, listed on Euronext Milan (MOT) to support renewable energy projects, including transmission and distribution networks, as well as pollution prevention initiatives.

• Île-de-France Mobilités raised €1 billion through the first EU Green Bond ever issued by a public entity, listed on Euronext Paris. The bond will support the development of a carbon-free transport network for the greater Paris region — a milestone for public sector sustainable finance.

• ABN AMRO issued a €750 million EU Green Bond, the first of its kind from a financial institution, listed on Euronext Amsterdam. The transaction aligns with the European Union’s new green bond standard and attracted strong ESG-focused demand.

• Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield listed a €815 million perpetual hybrid bond on Euronext Paris, with a 4.875 coupon and around €2.5 billion in demand. The structure supports liability management and capital optimisation for one of Europe’s largest real estate groups. 

• Neste Corporation, a global leader in renewable fuels, issued a €700 million Green Bond listed on Euronext Dublin. Proceeds will finance projects turning waste and raw materials into renewable energy sources and recyclable feedstocks.

• INWIT, Italy’s largest telecommunications infrastructure operator, raised €750 million through a 5-year bond listed on Euronext Milan (MOT). The issuance supports innovation and digitalisation – a reflection of growing demand for connectivity infrastructure financing.

View full list of bond listings

Market trends and outlook for H2 2025

The outlook for the second half of 2025 remains positive, with a healthy pipeline and strong issuer engagement across sectors. Key trends include:

• Sustained bank issuance
  Bank bond activity remains a cornerstone of overall market volumes. While H2 issuance is expected to moderate slightly from the exceptional levels seen in H1, financial institutions continue to benefit from tight spreads and solid demand for structured formats.

• Accelerating corporate bond activity
  Corporate issuance is outpacing early-year expectations. The robust pipeline expected in Q2 fully materialised and momentum is continuing into H2. Drivers include lower rates, refinancing needs, and increased activity from US-based corporates issuing euro-denominated bonds ("reverse Yankees") in response to domestic market volatility.

• Stable sovereign and supranational volumes
  Issuance by sovereigns and supranational entities remains elevated, in line with forecasts. Ongoing fiscal needs and EU-level funding programmes continue to support activity – particularly in areas such as energy transition, economic resilience and defence.

Overall, while macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty may introduce some volatility, Euronext expects continued debt listing momentum in the second half of the year.

Want to learn more?

Visit our bond listing webpage and get in touch with the Euronext team.

Learn more about our bond listing process

Euronext Single Stock and CAC 40 Index Options off to a strong start in Q1 2025

Euronext’s financial derivatives markets continued to demonstrate robust growth in Q1 2025, particularly in Single Stock Options trading. Volumes rose to 22 million contracts, marking a 23% increase year to date, and building on the strong gains seen in 2024.

This sustained momentum was powered by strong performances across key markets -  Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan - each contributing to the dynamic and balanced growth of Euronext’s pan-European options offering. Euronext Paris led the way with a notable surge in volumes, while Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Milan posted steady gains, confirming a renewed appetite for equity derivatives among market participants.

In addition, CAC 40 Index Options recorded exceptional growth in Q1 2025, with volumes up by 160.2%. This outstanding performance builds on sustained activity since mid-2024, notably during politically driven peaks in June and July. Growth was further supported by the successful launch of Daily Options on the CAC 40 Index in February 2024.

The analysis below provides a breakdown of activity and rankings per market, highlighting key drivers, sector contributions, and standout performers in Euronext's Single Stock Options volumes for Q1 2025. It also includes record activity in CAC 40 Index Options.

Overall activity overview

In Q1 2025, Single Stock Options volumes reached 22 million contracts, representing a 23% increase year to date. This growth continues the strong upward trend observed in 2024, which recorded an 19% increase compared to 2023.

This growth was largely driven by the Euronext Paris market, which saw a notable 22% increase in traded volumes in Q1 2025 compared to the same period last year. Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Milan also contributed to the positive trend, with steady increases of 4%, respectively.

Over the last quarter, Euronext Paris accounted for 42% of the activity on Single Stock Options, highlighting its strong performance. Euronext Amsterdam maintained a solid 40% share, while Euronext Milan contributed with a stable 18%, reflecting a well-balanced distribution across the key markets.

Euronext Paris volumes and rankings

In 2024, trading activity in Paris was significantly stimulated by political events and market uncertainty, particularly between June and November. This upward trend continued into Q1 2025, with 8.7 million contracts traded.

The average daily volume increased from 107,100 before June 2024 to 125,300 between June and December 2024, reflecting a 17% rise. June and November notably exhibited significant trading volumes. 

This growth was supported by strong activity across key sectors such as banking, infrastructure, and energy. Notable contributors included STMicroelectronics, which saw a 127% year-on-year increase, followed by Renault (+96%), Stellantis (+81%), Orange (+75%), and Engie (+61%).

Euronext Amsterdam volumes and rankings

The Euronext Amsterdam market is showing encouraging signs of renewed activity, with a clear rebound in recent months. In particular, volumes increased by 38% between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, returning to levels comparable to early 2024. This positive trend reflects improving market conditions and growing investor engagement.
 

Several key stocks contributed to the strong performance of the Amsterdam market in 2024, including Aegon, which posted an impressive 50% increase, and ASML Holding, up 18% over the year. 

Euronext Milan volumes and rankings

Euronext Milan recorded strong growth in Q1 2025, with Single Stock Options volumes rising by 58% compared to the previous quarter. Activity reached levels comparable to Q1 2024, highlighting renewed engagement in the Italian equity derivatives market. 

CAC 40 Index Options: record activity

Regarding Index Options, the CAC 40 Index Options recorded an outstanding performance in Q1 2025, with volumes surging by an impressive 160%.

Growth continued in March 2025, building on the strong dynamics observed in mid-2024, especially during the politically driven peaks of June and July 2024 and was further supported by the successful launch of Daily Options on the CAC 40 Index last February 2024.

April 2025

Euronext launches Mini Single Stock Options on French and Dutch underlyings building on its strong existing options trading offering, reinforcing its position as the leading European hub.

These new listings complement the standard contracts already available on the Euronext markets and aim to boost retail participation by making options trading more accessible.

Mini Options offer investors a broader range of choices and new hedging opportunities.

Mini Options: small size, greater flexibility and easier access to trading

Mini options are single stock options with a smaller contract size of just 10 shares, compared to 100 shares for standard options. 

They are designed for retail investors looking to gain greater exposure to higher-priced stocks on Euronext or to hedge existing positions with reduced financial commitment and lower risk.     

What are the Mini Options available for trading on Euronext?

• Listed in the Spotlight Options segment to encourage trading participation

• Leveraging Euronext’s Optiq^® platform for high performance and low latency

• Strong risk management via an efficient model powered by Euronext Clearing

• Dedicated market makers ensuring continuous market liquidity

Key benefits of trading Euronext Mini Single Stock Options

Mini stock options offer greater flexibility for investors with a limited risk appetite. Their reduced size provides more control over exposure.

• Lower outlay: mini options require less capital – approximatively one-tenth of what is needed for a standard contract. Investors can trade high-value stocks without needing large upfront investments.  

• Ideal for hedging odd lots: mini options are useful for investors holding odd lots (fewer than 100 shares) of high-priced stocks. They are precise for hedging strategies such as like buying protective puts or writing calls by closely matching the actual number of shares held.

• A valuable tool for limited capital: mini options open access to premium stocks without large financial commitments.

Mini Options. Accessibility Meets Opportunity.  
 

More about Euronext Single Stock Mini Options

Download the factsheet

Visit the webpage on Mini German Options

Last week, Euronext released its new policy memo, ‘Breaking barriers: a blueprint for capital markets integration in the EU,’ calling for decisive reform to unify and strengthen Europe’s fragmented capital markets. The paper outlines how the EU’s €13 trillion in private savings can be better channelled into productive investments if structural obstacles such as fragmented supervision, disjointed post-trade infrastructure and opaque market structures hampering liquidity pools are finally addressed. 

Euronext’s proposals include moving toward a single European rulebook and centralised supervision under a reformed European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), expanding the Target2-Securities platform to cover all EU CSDs, and harmonising access to trading venues. These reforms, the memo explains, are a strategic necessity if the EU wants to remain globally competitive. 

To explore the motivations behind the memo and Euronext’s role in shaping the debate, we sat down with Jakub Michalik, Chief Policy Officer at Euronext. 

What distinguishes Euronext from other players on Europe’s financial markets? 

 We are the leading capital market infrastructure in Europe, supporting around 1,800 companies to raise capital through fast and efficient listings. Beyond trading, we provide clearing, settlement, custody, corporate solutions and market data, covering the whole value chain. We also run programmes like IPOready and investor education, and work closely with SMEs across Europe to help them grow. 

Euronext is deeply rooted in local communities across Europe. Through our federal model, we maintain strong local roots while connecting individual markets at a European scale. That gives us a unique perspective on what European capital markets need from not only a commercial point of view, but from a systemic, public interest perspective. 

The memo frames the Savings and Investments Union as a ‘competitiveness imperative’ for Europe. What is at stake if these structural reforms aren’t implemented? 

A healthy, competitive economy needs diverse sources of funding. But in much of Europe, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe, up to 85% of business funding still comes from banks. Only about 10% to 20% comes from capital markets. That’s in sharp contrast to the US, where roughly 75% of corporate funding is capital markets-based, and only the remainder comes from banks. 

While Europe has historically relied on banks to finance its private sector investments, we see that this model has its limits, especially as regulatory constraints has tightened after the Global Financial Crisis and as businesses face increasing capital needs. Without reform, we are putting a ceiling on how far European companies can grow and compete with globalised markets. 

That is why the shift toward capital markets-based financing is both technical and strategic. On one side, we need to encourage more companies to raise funds through IPOs, bond markets, and other instruments. On the other side, we need to mobilise Europe’s massive pool of private savings, which is over €13 trillion, and channel more of that into productive investment, rather than leaving it in bank accounts or in real estate. 

If we don’t act now, Europe risks falling further behind in innovation, competitiveness and strategic autonomy. That’s why these reforms are so critical and urgent. 

One of the memo’s core recommendations is for a single rulebook and single supervisor via a reformed ESMA. Why has this been so difficult to achieve, and what would change if it finally happened? 

The idea of a single rulebook and a single supervisor is essential. It’s not a choice between the two – both are needed to truly integrate European capital markets. The main reason we haven’t arrived there yet is that the European single market is still very much a work in progress. Historically, we’ve relied on directives that each Member State transposes into national law. But during that process, countries often introduce their own additions, what we call ‘gold plating’, which ends up fragmenting the market rather than unifying it. 

At Euronext, we operate in seven EU countries, all under the same trading platform (Optiq^®). Yet we regularly face different interpretations of the essentially same underlying European rules from national regulators. That results in inconsistencies, duplications and even contradictions, which create inefficiencies and barriers to scale. A single supervisor would eliminate this fragmentation and enable more efficient, consistent supervisory processes across national borders for all financial market infrastructures. 

Beyond internal efficiencies, a harmonised rulebook and central supervision are also essential for how Europe is perceived externally. Global investors don’t tend to look at Europe as 27 separate jurisdictions – they expect a unified capital market with fully harmonised rules. That’s why we believe it’s time for ESMA to evolve. Established in 2011, ESMA already has a strong track record as both a rule maker and a supervisor. Europe is ready for the next step: empowering ESMA with central supervisory authority over large and cross-border financial market infrastructures. Only then can we build a truly unified and competitive capital market.  

In addition, we would very much welcome changes in the EU legal system allowing for a treatment of cross-border financial market infrastructures like ours as a group rather than a bunch of individual licence holders, similarly to how other financial institutions can operate already today.  

The memo described the post-trade environment, especially custody and settlement, as fragmented and costly. Can you give a real-world example of how this affects investors or companies today? 

This challenge has been highlighted not only by us but also in major reports from leaders like Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta on the state of the European single market. The core issue is that Europe’s post-trade infrastructure was developed largely along national lines. That legacy of fragmentation means we still operate in silos, where cross-border transactions are more complex, more expensive and less efficient than they should be. 

While the European Central Bank’s Target2-Securities platform, which was designed to serve as a pan-European settlement system, has the potential to streamline cross-border settlement, it remains underused. Euronext has been one of the early adopters and advocates for connecting through this platform, and we believe all European central securities depositories should be onboarded. Broader adoption would make the system more efficient and cost-effective for everyone, and we believe it would allow to expand also to transactions in other currencies than Euro. 

Ultimately, this directly impacts investors and companies. Fragmented settlement systems raise the cost of investing across borders and make it harder for companies to tap into funding from the wider European market. Creating a seamless post-trade environment is critical if we want accessible cross-border investment in Europe. 

The memo raises concerns about the rise of dark and bilateral trading venues. What risks do they pose to market integrity, and how should regulation respond? 

Several years ago, European legislators focused on making the trading landscape more competitive, which led to the development of various types of venues with regulated markets like Euronext, but also MTFs, OTFs, systematic internalisers and dark pools. The result is that today, about 67% of trading in Europe does not happen on lit venues. That has a negative impact on price discovery, which becomes opaque, and ultimately undermines orderly markets. 

We believe this imbalance needs to be addressed. While the increased competition has brought some better pricing conditions to investors, and dark trading can at times serve legitimate purposes, such as executing large orders without market impact, our data shows that today around 60% of dark venue trades are for ticket sizes below €5,000. So this is not about the usage of dark trading by large institutional investors or for large-in-scale trades, but rather retail order flow being routed into dark or bilateral venues, which raises concerns. 

That’s why we are calling on the European Commission, Parliament and Council as well as on ESMA to take a closer look at how to improve the balance between lit and dark trading, and to make sure that the foundational role of lit markets in price formation is protected. 

Beyond regulatory and infrastructure reform, what practical steps should the EU take to encourage more long-term equity investment, especially from retail investors? 

European citizens are strong savers, but they have historically been less engaged with capital markets. There are several reasons for this. First, there’s a general culture of risk aversion in large parts of Europe. Second, investor education is still quite limited across many EU countries. Third, access to suitable investment products is improving only slowly, whether those are direct investments or products like passive ETFs. 

That’s why we strongly support initiatives at both European and national levels aimed at boosting awareness, improving investor education and helping shift the cultural mindset around long-term investment. We also believe there’s a real opportunity to make progress through the development of European and national investment or savings accounts, and through changes to tax regimes that currently may somehow disincentivise capital markets investments compared to other savings vehicles. Finally, we support any reforms that would deepen pension systems. In the long run, more robust and market-oriented pension schemes will be key to ensuring sustainable retirement systems across Europe. 

For more insights, read the original policy memo, ‘Breaking barriers: a blueprint for capital markets integration in the EU’, where Euronext presents a clear roadmap to strengthen Europe’s investment landscape and build a truly unified capital market.