(News Bulletin 247) – For the boss of Euronext, the union of European stock exchanges would not erase the Totalenergies discount, which pushes the French group to want to transfer its main listing to New York.

The chairman of the board of the stock exchange operator Euronext, Stéphane Boujnah, estimated on Monday May 20 that the establishment of a capital markets union in Europe would “change nothing” to the problem of undervaluation of Totalenergies, which pushes the company to consider listing primarily in the United States.

On April 26, the CEO of Totalenergies, Patrick Pouyanné, declared during an interview with the Bloomberg agency that he was considering a main listing on the New York Stock Exchange, in order to get closer to American institutional investors who constitute close to the half of the group’s shareholders.

“It’s not a liquidity problem, it’s not a market problem, it’s a problem of investor appetite and valuation,” said Stéphane Boujnah boursorama.com/videos/actualites/stephane- boujnah-euronext-we-work-with-totalenergies-to-find-solutions-to-its-valuation-gap-problem-without-controversy-94a063d0c5ab6c8fbfe8a6331d27da94″>Monday at the microphone of Boursorama.

“More appetite” from North American investors

Faced with the rise of sustainable investment approaches in Europe, Totalenergies observes “clearly more appetite for the shares of companies in the energy, oil and gas sectors in North America than in Europe”, said Patrick Pouyanné during a conference dedicated to financial analysts.

“In Europe, we attach a lot of importance to ESG (environmental, societal or governance considerations, editor’s note), to decarbonization”, while “in the United States, investors say ‘yes, maybe , not really, it’s not as important as performance'”, according to Stéphane Boujnah.

Even with “a union of capital markets which would further accelerate the liquidity of European markets, you will not change the fact that we like oil and Total more when we are investors in the United States and that we like oil and Total less Total in Europe,” he insisted.

In reaction to Patrick Pouyanné’s announcement, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire estimated that “the best way” to meet Totalenergies’ financing needs was to set up a capital markets union (UMC) in the European Union.

This project would increase the size of the European stock market so that companies can finance themselves there more. Emmanuel Macron also spoke in favor of “a true European internal market”.

Euronext “is working on several technical tools (…) to reconcile the fact that Total needs to resolve a valuation gap problem by trying to stay anchored to the place where there is the most liquidity, which is Euronext “, indicated the boss of the Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon and Oslo stock exchanges.

(With AFP)