France's Paris Stock Exchange

In times gone by, stock trading was a thriving avenue of business in Paris. Stock trading activities took place at several different locations around the city until they eventually settled at a permanent location at the Palais de la Bourse (or Palais Brongniart after architect Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart who designed the building). In the later half of the nineteenth century, the official stock markets traded from this building were operated by the Compagnie des agents de change. There were roughly 60 agents at the Paris Bourse and each agent was a French citizen who was specially selected through a strict procedure. These agents could not trade on their own behalf in any way whatsoever. They made money instead by being paid at a fix rate for their services as an intermediary.

Things started changing radically in 1986 when the Paris Stock Exchange installed an electronic trading system known as a Computer Assisted Trading System (CATS). Just three years later, quotation was fully automated. This resulted in a number of further improvements to the system. By 1998 the derivates exchanges known as MATIF and MONEP were also fully automated. The Euronext initiative, of which the Paris Bourse is a part, was also launched in near the turn of the century. As a member of this stock exchange alliance, the Paris Stock Exchange is now known as Euronext Paris. Some examples of companies listed on the Paris Stock Exchange are France Telecom, L’Oreal, Lafarge, Peugeot and Renault.

France enjoys a GDP of roughly $1.871 trillion a year which make it the sixth largest economy in the world. It has the lowest poverty rate of the larger economies and the lowest income inequality rate. France has a particularly strong services sector with 72.9% of the country’s GDP being generated by this sector alone. Agriculture plays a fairly minor role of only 2.7%. The country also enjoys a good level of trade and exports amounted to $490 billion in 2006 while imports amounted to $529.1 billion. France’s main trading partners are Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK, the US, Belgium and the Netherlands. The country’s main industries are machinery, chemicals, metallurgy, aircraft manufacture, automobile manufacture, electronics, textiles, food processing and tourism.

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