The number of trades on SETS, the London Stock Exchange’s electronic order book, increased to 2.67 million (of which 131,884 were trades on SETSmm(tm)) in December 2003, a rise of 35 per cent on the number of trades in December 2002.
The value traded on SETS during the month was 53.2 billion (of which 1.6 billion was for trades on SETSmm), up from 40.2 billion in December 2002. The average daily number of trades on SETS was 127,224 up from 98,718 in December 2002.
For the year as a whole, there were 32.9 million SETS trades, which represented a 38 per cent increase on 2002. The value of these trades in 2003 increased seven per cent on 2002, from 670.5 billion to 715.2 billion.
International Order Book (IOB) trading on the Exchange increased by 50 per cent to 27,936 trades in December 2003, up from 18,608 trades in December 2002. The value of these trades rose from 3.7 billion in December 2002 to 7.5 billion in December 2003.
The total number of equity trades on the Exchange was 4.47 million in December 2003. This was up 17 per cent on a total of 3.81 million equity trades in December 2002. The total value of shares traded in December 2003 was 304.3 billion, up from 258.3 billion in December last year. In 2003 there were 56.11 million trades, a seven per cent increase on 2002.
The number of trades in the covered warrant market increased to 4,165 trades in December 2003, compared with 901 trades in December 2002. The value of these trades was 128.1 million, compared with 1.67 million in December 2002.
On the primary market, there were 42 new issues during December 2003, 25 of which were IPOs: six on the Main Market and 19 on AIM, raising 1.2 billion between them. This compares with 17 new issues, of which seven were IPOs in December 2002.
During 2003, there were 201 new issues, 86 of which were IPOs: 20 on the Main Market, (17 UK companies and three international companies) and 66 on AIM, raising 4.5 billion between them. This compares with 228 new issues in 2002, 97 of which were IPOs: 37 on the Main Market and 60 on AIM, raising 5.3 billion between them.
There were 21 business days in December 2003 compared with 20 days in December 2002