Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our 2021 Investor Day. I'm Stéphane Boujnah, the CEO and Chairman of the Managing Board of Euronext. Today with my colleagues from the extended managing board who are in the room, we will present to you our 2024 ambitions or 2024 business roadmap, our 2024 targets. Before entering into these detailed discussions, I would like to share with you a very simple video to offer you a visual presentation of the key concepts and the key messages, the key takeaway of today. This morning will be dedicated to the group ambitions, the group business roadmap, and the targets, followed by the Q&A.
This afternoon, we will have dedicated sessions on specific projects and specific businesses. I'm very pleased to welcome you today, both physically within the premises of Euronext in Milan and Borsa Italiana, and virtually thanks to our best-in-class webcast provider Company Webcast. I would like to thank all the shareholders represented in this room or investors or reference holders for their continuous support in making things happen and in making the success of Euronext. The Palazzo Mezzanotte is a place full of history. Some of you may know the Roman ruins downstairs, but this place marks also an historical turning point for Euronext in many respects.
What we are going to share with you is really a set of commitments, a set of ambitions that express the turning point that has been created by the acquisition of Borsa Italiana and its impact on the group. Before the introduction of the new strategic plan, allow me to remind you the recent developments that have shaped the Euronext of today. These recent developments are actually the seeds that we have planted over the past few years for the growth of the years to come.
With this fantastic team that is developing the project since 2016, we have been able to go through the voyage that has been presented to you in this short video. We have created the bedrock of assets that is going to allow us to make the coming years possible. Moving to the next page, you can see that since the IPO in 2014, Euronext has transformed itself deeply and fast. We significantly increased both our revenues and/or we have diversified our revenue mix, and we have increased our market capitalization.
This transformation has accelerated in the course of our previous strategic plan, Let's Grow Together 2022, that we launched in 2019, because we have grown fast and we have diversified. We achieved two years in advance and in excess of our initial 2019 commitments, the targets of the Let's Grow Together strategic plan. Within the scope of the financial perimeter of this plan, we delivered an average revenue growth per year above 6% and a EBITDA margin of 60.5%, which demonstrates our ability to capture value and to control cost. In the meantime, we continued to return value and capital to shareholders by distributing 50% of our reported net income.
Let me focus on the transformation journey Euronext underwent, because as I said, this journey contains the components of the transformation journey ahead of us. Between 2018 and 2020, we doubled the market capitalizations and the annual revenue of the group. This was not made at the expense of profitability, because revenue growth, combined with a strong cost discipline, resulted in a group EBITDA margin that reached 58% for 2020 pro forma, including Borsa Italiana. The significant increase in revenue reflects both organic growth and successful diversification through acquisitions and expansion of our federal model. This scale up also translated into our operations. We now operate a bond trading platform, a fully-owned clearing house, and four CSDs.
In addition, our federal model continued to demonstrate its attractiveness and its effectiveness. From operating four regulated markets in 2014, we are now operating seven regulated markets and regulated exchanges in Europe. Clearly this journey would not have been possible without the commitment and dedication of amazing talents we have in this group, the energy of these talents, this human capital, the skills, the expertise of our team members. We are now more than twice the number of people or team members that we had in 2018, and more than three times the size of the workforce in the time of our IPO in 2014. As we grew, we significantly diversified our business mix.
I mean, we expanded in power trading, in fixed income trading, and we strengthened our presence in post-trade activities. We doubled our revenue. As we doubled our revenue, we continued to improve the mix. That's quite important, an increasing share of the non-volume related revenue. As you know, this is a metric we monitor very closely, and this share of non-volume related revenue is increasing. It's increasing slowly, but it's increasing. It's increasing despite the fact that 2020 was especially a very good year for any volume related business. Volatility was there, and anyone who was in the equity trading business or in the bond trading business was in the sweet spot in 2020.
Despite that, the share of non-volume related business has significantly increased. We expanded across new geographies. The most recent development is obviously the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group, but we strengthened significantly before the acquisition of Borsa Italiana in the Nordic region, which is a very important region for the development of Euronext, as we settled in Denmark with the acquisition of VP Securities in Copenhagen in 2020. We reinforced our presence in Norway with the acquisition of Nord Pool in 2020, and also in Finland, with a significant part of the technology teams of Nord Pool.
New geographies today represent more than 1/3 of our revenue compared to 2018, and more than half the revenue of the group at the time of the IPO in 2014, with a much more balanced revenue mix across the various European geographies than it has been the case historically. As a major result of this geographical expansion, this consolidation of our liquidity pool, Euronext is now the first exchange in Europe, both in terms of domestic and aggregate market capitalizations. This slide is very telling in this respect. This leading position is illustrated or is confirmed in 2021 as we have reported a record year with 167 new equity listings so far.
Clearly, we changed scale. This change in the scale of Euronext is a major source of growth opportunities for the future, as we will discuss it later on. Through this journey, we delivered our ambition to build the leading pan-European market infrastructure. The reality is as simple as that. I know that sometimes it's surprising for people who remember the years where Euronext was small and fragile and vulnerable, but the world has totally changed. We are today the first cash equity trading venue in Europe, with 25% of the total European equities flows traded through Euronext markets, and that represents approximately EUR 11.7 billion-EUR 12 billion euros traded every day on Euronext markets.
We are today the first equity listing venue in Europe with EUR 6.5 trillion of aggregated market capitalizations on Euronext markets. We are today the first bond listing venue, not only in Europe, but worldwide, with more than 52,000 bonds listed on Euronext markets, mainly on Euronext Dublin. We now operate MTS, the leading platform in Europe for dealer-to-dealer trading of government bonds. We now operate a fully owned multi-asset clearing house, CC&G, and we are the third CSD operator in Europe with total asset under custody above EUR 6 trillion across the group when you consolidate our CSD in Porto, our CSD in Oslo, our CSD in Copenhagen, and our CSD in Milan. As you can see, today, Euronext is the leading diversified Pan-European market infrastructure. Again, this change of scale, this change of perimeter, does create numerous opportunities.
Let me highlight briefly how we managed to finance the transformation, in particular, the most recent expansion phase since 2019. Between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021, Euronext generated around EUR 1.3 billion of cumulative EBITDA. Thanks to our strong cash generation capabilities, we transformed around 65% of our EBITDA into net operating cash flow. Over this period, we added EUR 1.6 billion of new net debt to our balance sheet, and we successfully executed a capital increase. We raised EUR 2.4 billion to support our value-creating acquisitions, notably the acquisition of Borsa Italiana in April of this year. All in all, it is EUR 4.8 billion that we have deployed over the course of our previous strategic plan since 2019.
The strong support we received from our existing shareholders, but also from new shareholders, the strong support we received from existing bondholders, and also from new bondholders in May 2021, illustrated, in my view, the strong support for this, strategy. Here is a snapshot of this expansion, because over the course of our last two previous plans, we continuously deployed capital all across the value chain to strengthen, to diversify our profile. As indicated several times, but it's a key theme of this day, these diversifications unlock new opportunities for our existing business. This diversification is also going to be key for the next few years, because when you buy a company, you don't only buy revenue generation, EBITDA generation. You buy a granular connectivity with clients. You buy accumulated expertise within a team that has gone through a process of working together.
You buy memories of wars fought together within the management of those organizations. You buy ideas, creativity. The value of any asset is bigger than what can be captured by financial metrics, and is a source of synergies. The surface contact of any asset you buy is not just a multiple of EBITDA net income. That diversification has been absolutely critical and is a definitive enabler for the growth to come. Now, as I said, nothing in our expansion was made at the expense of our profitability. Cost discipline is part of the DNA of Euronext and will always be. This is a fundamental feature of who we are because of our fundamental history. We were born, and we had to develop under pressure.
Everything we manage today was not given to us, we had to fight for it, and performance has been a condition of independence and of growth. The fundamental DNA of Euronext remains cost discipline. When we acquire companies, we expect to increase their profitability to a level comparable to the one of the group. The Euronext expertise in integration and cost control is a result of what we have first imposed to ourselves since the IPO. We're close to EUR 110 million saved between 2014 at the IPO and four years later in 2018. Since then, we have successfully integrated new businesses and we have also managed to deliver on the announced synergies well ahead of schedule and in excess, as you can see in these slides.
In total, we have achieved EUR 138 million of efficiency across the group since the IPO. In the meantime, we have also invested into the business. We have strengthened the infrastructure. We have developed the Optiq platform. We have done several migrations. We have leveraged local best practices precisely to create value from a stronger talent pool across the organization. These journeys resulted in a superior value creation for the benefit of our shareholders, supporting the long-term performance of our benchmarks with a total return for shareholders since IPO well above 500%.
Anyone who invested money in June 2014 and keeps its initial, his or her initial shares in Euronext has made more money than in any investment in other company in the sector, including the collective dividends. Let's move to the beef. Let's move to the plan itself. Before moving to the plan, I'd like to address some of the key trends that will shape the environment in which we will operate and which will impact the year to come.
Clearly, each of these items will deserve more than an hour of discussion, so I will just highlight how we are approaching them in a very superficial manner, to remind you what we believe is going to create constraints that we need to manage to mitigate the impact of such constraints, and what are the elements of the environments that are creating opportunities that we must capture to grow the company. Because our job is precisely to capture opportunities from the environment and to mitigate the consequences of adverse trends. With regards to competition, on the listing side, clearly private equity importance is here to stay in fundraising, and is probably expected to continue to grow.
What we have to do is to continue to develop with private equity players, partnership relationships as we do today, to make sure that access to public market becomes the natural, ultimate liquidity solution for them. Private equity guys have to become our partners. In trading, despite the initial intentions of MiFID II to migrate more volumes to lit markets, what we observe is that in reality, the volumes still trading on dark liquidity pools remain significant. Clearly, the European Commission is trying to address it, but the share of the trading that is done on lit venues and on dark liquidity pools remains an issue. On the regulatory environment, one of the key topic is going to be the post-Brexit adjustment.
In the next few years, what the European Commission will do will be absolutely critical for the future of industry, and what the London regulators, supervisors, and policymakers will do will be as important. We will have now a moment of testing the EU global competitiveness. We expect the regulatory agenda to focus on delivering the Capital Markets Union, on entrenching the sustainability imperative. I'll spend a few minutes on it. We expect the regulatory agenda to also focus on digitalization with the new Digital Finance Package. Digitalization is not only regulatory topics. They will fundamentally transform the market structure and drive forward innovation in our industry. Obviously, digitalization is here to stay. It was vastly accelerated with COVID.
I was impressed by some numbers indicating that pre-COVID, less than 20% of client interactions were digital with EU corporates, whereas post-COVID is 50% of client interactions with EU corporates which are digital. Beyond the lever for more efficient operations, it's just a fundamental. Digitalization is a fundamental driver for the reinvention of our models, and Georges Lauchard, our Group Chief Operating Officer will present you our approach of this trend. The other big trend, which is not only regulatory, is the environmental, social and governance performance imperative, which will play a pivotal role in financial markets. I do believe that this ESG transformation is the most massive change in capitalism for centuries.
I mean, investors were expecting for centuries performance, yield, liquidity, capital gains, and now they want performance, yield, liquidity, capital gains, and a contribution to the fight against climate change, and a contribution to society, and a diverse and transparent governance. This is a reality. In the good old days, in the past, ESG performance was a tool to diversify your investor base. Now, it's a prerequisite to keep your investors. That's a reality which in my view is not going to slow down or to pause in the years to come, but is going to be a fundamental acceleration in the months to come. The market will also continue to be driven by electronification.
Beyond equities, electronic trading now accounts for 75% of global Forex trading, but only 50% of the EU bond trading. Which is an opportunity for electronic platforms like MTS. With end clients that are now increasingly seeking more direct market access, looking for trading models that should become increasingly bespoke and combine the added value of electronic markets with the customizability of voice trading. They will not be the only transformation in the value chain, because sell side and buy side are going to continue consolidation, and they are going to continue their expansion, their concentration within the full value chain. Lastly, three key trends will be increasingly present. First, blockchain and distributed ledger development. Second, crypto assets. Third, the rise of retail trading.
Investment in blockchain and distributed ledger deployment in core financial market is obviously expected to continue, albeit differently than initially expected, because the real tangible use cases still remain less numerous and concrete than anticipated a few years ago. Cryptos are reaching all-time highs in market valuations, and slowly further institutional adoption is coming. We are also observing a slow onboarding of appropriate regulatory framing of those assets.
Third, retail investors are expected to continue to grow their participation in markets, just because, well, what we observe today is that the number of retail investors in Euronext markets has doubled, but the combination of the pandemic, remote working, a new generation of people used to to interacting with the world with a screen. The fact that, which is very underestimated, is that in this device, you have no more information available to analyze a stock than what was available to an equity research analyst 20 years ago, is creating a situation where retail investors are going to form a new generations of investors in the market.
What we want to achieve with these assets in this environment that I've just covered very quickly is pretty straightforward. We want to build the leading market infrastructure in Europe to shape capital markets for future generations. For the coming years, our mission will be to connect European economies to global markets to accelerate innovation and sustainable growth. This is why we introduced today our new strategic plan Growth for Impact 2024. Because we are cognizant of our role, we are conscious of our critical size, our central position in capital markets, and we acknowledge that our leadership position creates upon us obligations to shape the future of capital markets for the next generations. Our strategy is based on five strategic priorities. First, leverage on our integrated value chain.
With the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group, Euronext has transformed, as I said, and has changed its scale. For the first time since the IPO in 2014, we are now directly involved in the management of the full value chain of capital markets. We have seized all the opportunities offered by this acquisition, and we have significant projects ahead of us. First, we will spend a few more minutes on that one, but I just want to highlight it. We have decided to manage directly the Euronext clearing flows. Therefore, we will grow the Italian clearinghouse, CC&G, into Euronext Clearing, making it the Euronext CCP of choice for its cash equity, listed derivatives, and commodities markets. Second, we will expand geographically MTS, the leading European fixed-income trading platform.
Third, Borsa Italiana will join the Euronext Single Order Book powered by Optiq, the Euronext state-of-the-art technology platform. Fourth, our core data center will migrate from Basildon, near London, to Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo, to operate from there, La Grida, the data center that will handle 25% of the European trading volumes, and which we all know will be back to the European Union. Fabrizio Testa, who will take office on 28th of November as CEO of Borsa Italiana, will present you the key projects that I've just highlighted, and I will develop some of the strategic decisions. Our second strategic priority is to pan-Europeanize our CSDs. Euronext operates a leading CSD network representing EUR 6.3 trillion of assets under custody, and Euronext is now the third CSD operator in Europe.
We are combining our four CSDs in Porto, in Copenhagen, in Oslo, in Milan, into Euronext Securities, which is more than a new brand for CSD business. It's a new ambition beyond the initial one of Euronext of CSDs. Euronext Securities is an ambition to create convergence of technology platforms and to keep strong local presence, but in a very coordinated manner. Under the new brand, Euronext Securities, we also believe that we can diversify significantly our activity in Europe. Anthony Attia, who runs this endeavor for years now, will tell you more about this development. Our third strategy priority is to build upon our leadership in Europe. Again, Euronext is the largest cash equities and ETF liquidity pool in Europe and the leading listed venue.
Our strategy aims at becoming the global champion. We want to serve even better the financing needs of issuers to help them cover their own funds requirements, especially post-pandemic. With the combination of our 7 regulated markets, Euronext aims to be the main gateway for listings and for listing of equities and debt in Europe. We will maximize the competitiveness of our exchanges to facilitate new listing because our goal is to attract more and more international issuers on Euronext markets to make sure that Euronext markets are the venue of choice for international listing in the European continent with more tech companies, and also focus in facilitating the financing and the listing of European SMEs.
On the ESG front, when it comes to listing, I'm proud to announce the launch of the Climate Leaders market segment to provide more visibility to sustainable issuers that are more advanced than their peers in terms of climate change and climate transition. Today, as I said, we represent 25% of the Euronext trading activity in seven European markets. Once the strategic projects related to, first, the core data center migration, second, the Optiq migration of the Borsa Italiana capital markets, and third, the expansion of our clearing activities are achieved, we will be in a perfect slot, in a perfect position to build an integrated European capital market. On crypto assets, we will offer our clients optionality to manage their exposure through ETPs, crypto indices, and derivatives.
Simon Gallagher will present you our ambition in this field. We also want to scale up or advance data services by becoming the number 1 ESG indices provider in order to drive investment in sustainable asset. We will also use our innovation and commercial capabilities to expand our advanced data services. Chris Topple will further detail our ambitions in this domain. This ambitious strategy relies on our ability to leverage scale in technology. Euronext is fundamentally a technology company because this change in scale is both enabled by a strong technology leadership, but is also an opportunity to take this technology leadership into new territories, you know, to improve, in particular, customer experience with the digitalized tools.
Georges Lauchard, our group COO, will present you our technology capabilities and strategy going forward, later today. Our fourth strategic priority is to empower sustainable finance. Euronext is resolved to grow to make an impact, and we want to build on our ESG strategy. We want to move from what we have done so far to a bolder impact-focused approach. That's why we will launch the Fit for 1.5° Climate Commitment. We commit to aligning our own emissions to a 1.5 degree trajectory, which, let's make no mistake, is the most demanding ambition under the Science Based Targets initiative. We will disclose our detailed target KPIs in terms of 1.5 degree trajectory in the course of the first semester, 2022.
In addition, we will develop products and services to drive investment to decarbonize assets with initiatives like, as I mentioned earlier, the Climate Leaders listing segment and an ESG version of our blue-chip national indices. We have started with the CAC 40 ESG. We have just launched in Italy the MIB ESG, and that will continue to be developed across the Euronext group. Because we want to support our clients on their ESG journey, and we want to offer a full suite of products that can contribute for us, but also for our clients and our partners, to achieving this 1.5-degree trajectory. Isabel Ucha, the CEO of Euronext Lisbon, will present our ESG strategy, and that will develop our people and diversity strategy.
Our last strategic priority is to continue deploying and to execute value-creative M&A. Euronext will pursue its growth strategy to high-value creative acquisitions aimed at diversifying and strengthening the business profile of the group. As a key market infrastructure, we expect to maintain Euronext investment grade status and to leverage our financial flexibility to capture market opportunities as they may arise. Within that, those set of constraints, Euronext will continue to monitor very closely and to get ready to act decisively on opportunities to transform further the organizations. Because our priority is to grow a company which serves tomorrow. We want Euronext to make an impact, to be more relevant on the lives of our customer, our team members, of our shareholders, of our stakeholders, of our society. We want Growth for Impact, and we cannot have impact without growth.
I now hand the floor to Giorgio Modica, the Euronext CFO, to discuss with you the 2024 guidance. Giorgio joined in March 2016, at the time of the first Euronext Investor Day, and he has been a key pillar or key partner in the team in building the company since 2016 and make it what it is today. Over to you, Giorgio.
Thank you very much. I am Giorgio Modica, the CFO of Euronext. For the third time, I have the privilege to present an Investor Day at Euronext. For the first time, it is in Italy, which makes it even more special for me. Today, it's a very special day as well for Euronext. In this room, we have gathered all our ecosystem. We have our clients, we have our investors, we have our regulators, and we have our colleagues. Having you here, it's important because this plan speaks to you all more than any other plan we ever released.
Our ambition to shape capital market for future generation deserves and needs your contribution. Without further ado, I would now, if you agree, move and review together the financial target for the new strategic plan of Euronext, Growth for Impact 2024. For this new plan, we have designed a simple and easy to track set of targets. Actually, we have four: revenue growth, EBITDA growth, CapEx level, and dividend payout. The starting point of this plan are revenues and EBITDA pro forma 2020, excluded transitional revenues and cost from and to the London Stock Exchange as those revenue and costs will not be there in 2024. Revenues are expected to grow in that period, 2020-2024, with a CAGR between 3% and 4%. EBITDA in the same period is expected to grow between 5% and 6%.
No changes with respect to the previous plan. No surprises as far as CapEx and dividend policy are concerned. CapEx will remain between 3% and 5% of revenues in the next 3 years, while the dividend payout is set at 50% of reported earnings. Now, those targets do include the synergies coming from Borsa Italiana that we will cover in a moment, but do not cover the potential positive impact coming from M&A. Now, if I had to qualify those targets, I would call them bold, strategically relevant, and transformational. Let me explain to you why. This plan is bold because with this plan we absorb the historical high of 2020, and we are ready to go from there.
Too often, Euronext is remembered to be the company targeting a growth rate between 2%-3%, and not enough to have delivered between 2018 and 2020 a growth rate organic of 6.4%. Few know as well, that in the first nine months of 2021, we are already ahead with respect the first nine months of 2020, with an organic growth rate at 3%. The other element that I would like to highlight is that the growth target do include a normalization on the environment, so are not based on the extremely high volatility that we have experienced in 2020. This is important to highlight. This plan is strategically relevant. When you make a plan, you need to take a number of decision.
Now, every time we have been confronted with a choice, we have systematically decided to take the more ambitious, the more strategically relevant option. We have spent countless hours with discussion with clients with the regulators, and at the end of this journey, we came out more ambitious. What has emerged is a very clear case to have Euronext providing more core services to its client and relying less to third parties. We can do it now, and we couldn't do it before because of two elements. First, because we have the legitimacy to do that now, and second, we have the critical mass to achieve those objectives. This will have very material consequences. It will bring more revenues and less cost on the P&L of Euronext. This will improve client proximity.
This will reduce third-party dependencies, and this will bring to the next level our capability to innovate. To achieve those objective, we have a very clear plan, and we are ready to work together with regulators and you all to make it happen. This plan is transformational. This is not a plan which is set for short-term performance. This plan is aimed at maximizing long-term growth potential and competitive advantage. In Euronext, in the management team, we always ask ourselves: Will it make Euronext stronger? This is the logic that has shaped this plan. We have a unique window of opportunity in the next three years to make it happen. We have all the ingredients available. We have companies covering part of the value chain we never had before. We have the right teams. We have the full commitment and a strong motivation to do that.
I like to think of Euronext as an athlete preparing for a competition. Next three years is about training and building mass to be as competitive as possible at the end of the journey. At the end of this journey, Euronext is going to be a stronger group, better able to compete across the value chain, enable as well to capture growth opportunity that today are not possible. This is not the only dimension that we have explored to be ambitious. We have been ambitious as well in setting the targets of the integration of Borsa Italiana. The new target is set at EUR 100 million. This is EUR 40 million more than the previous target or 67% more. This EUR 100 million is made of increased revenues or reduced costs or additional margin.
Now, this target is a major improvement with respect to the previous target for a number of reasons. Those new targets are geared towards business opportunity. If you look at the ratio between cost optimization and business opportunity, these new targets are completely different with respect to the previous one. In the previous target, we were targeting 25% of the EUR 60 million as upside from business opportunity. In this new plan, it is 55% of the new target of EUR 100 million. To say it differently, in absolute terms, the synergies coming from business opportunities are increasing threefold with respect to the previous plan. The second element I wanted to highlight is close to 50% of those synergies are coming from Euronext becoming more relevant to its own clients.
This entails having Euronext for the first time providing directly clearing services to its customers through CC&G, and having CC&G expanding its range of activity to serve Euronext clients across the different markets. This entails as well to provide directly colocation services and data center services after the migration to Ponte San Pietro. The third element I wanted to highlight is that we have high visibility on those targets. We are not targeting revenues coming from thin air. We are targeting existing revenues that existing clients of Euronext are paying to third parties in dealing with the Euronext flows. Now, the implementation of this plan will cost EUR 160 million. This is one-off.
For one time, we'll spend EUR 160 million, divided in 50% is going to impact our P&L in OpEx and 50% in exceptional items. There is a third dimension that we have explored to be ambitious, which is the one of M&A. As we have discussed, organic growth has been a key pillar for value creation in Euronext since the IPO. M&A is certainly another one. M&A has contributed to shape Euronext in what it is today, from a federation of local exchanges into a leading pan-European market infrastructure. The very fact that we are here in this building in Palazzo Mezzanotte is a testament to that. We are collectively proud of what we have achieved. We have demonstrated that consolidation of financial markets in Europe is possible where it was deemed impossible. Many told us larger competitors have tried and failed.
We have demonstrated that we can grow regulated market at the time where many were assuming the continuous erosion of the activity of the regulated markets. Many told us the trend in the U.S. is this, so Europe will need to follow the same trend. We were able to build a superior track record in execution while many told us you have reached the bottom, you cannot push it any further. We have always pushed the limit, and we always have over-delivered. We have succeeded where others have failed. We have demonstrated that joining forces creates value for all the parties involved, that sharing a more relevant market is more meaningful than a full control of a less relevant one.
To make it short, we have demonstrated that our model works, that it gives us a competitive advantage, and makes us a legitimate owner of other market infrastructures in Europe. Let me share with you a secret. Whether we like it or not, the consolidation trend is not over, and for a very simple reason, there is a law we all need to obey, and this is the law of liquidity. Liquidity attracts liquidity, and no one can ignore that law. We can't, our competitors can't, and the regulators can't. Liquidity will always find its way to the deepest liquidity pool within or outside the regulated markets. Now, the good news is that through meaningful M&A, Euronext has built the deepest liquidity pool in Europe for equity trading and listing, and we are starting to see the benefit of that. We cannot sit and wait.
We need to look forward at ways to make our market always more relevant, and M&A is a key tool for that. In doing that, we will apply the same approach we applied in the past. We will invest always in companies that provide a return on invested capital higher than the cost of capital in a period between 3 and 5 years based on a reasonable business plan. We will invest to bring our recent successes to the next level, mostly in services, investor services, corporate services, and post-trade services. We will consider as well transformational deals if it makes sense and if it will allow us to strengthen our current business, or it will help us to further diversify our revenue mix, improving the growth profile of the group or reducing reliance on volume.
In doing that, we will impose ourselves limitations. Three limitations. The first one is that we will continue to be as disciplined as we have been in the past. The second one is the full commitment to reach the objective of this plan, on which we will not compromise. The third one is our approach and appetite to leverage. Our approach and appetite to leverage will not change. Euronext has set a rating floor at investment grade, and we have no willingness to go any lower, and we will take that into consideration in any potential acquisition going forward. The good news is that capital generation remains strong. At the end of the third quarter, we had EUR 3.1 billion of outstanding debts with an average maturity of 9.1 years and a cost below 1%.
The element that I wanted to highlight is that our net leverage is below the 3x that we were targeting for the end of 2022, which means we are achieving the target 5 quarters in advance, and we are then ready to start this new plan with a great financial flexibility. Now, this concludes my first slide. Before giving the floor to Fabrizio Testa, I wanted to conclude saying that Euronext was, is, and will remain an ambitious growth story. Fabrizio Testa.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Fabrizio Testa. I'm the CEO of MTS, and I've been appointed the CEO of Borsa Italiana. I will take my function at the end of the month, and I'll join the Managing Board of Euronext, and be responsible also for the fixed income division of MTS. As you heard from my colleagues, Stéphane and Giorgio, this is a very powerful and strong project. This is a European project, and I really look forward to make the most of Borsa Italiana and Euronext's combined strength. Let me introduce you on how we are going to leverage our integrated value chain.
The acquisition of Borsa Italiana, you've heard it, already a few times, is transformational for Euronext. Italy is the third largest economy of Europe and a G7 country. Entering the Euronext Federation transforms the dynamics. First, as we've seen before, with Borsa, Euronext becomes the leading venue for equity listing and financing in Europe, with in excess of 1,900 companies, which represent a market cap of EUR 6.5 trillion. Furthermore, with Borsa, Euronext becomes the number one venue for cash equity and ETF trading in Europe. You heard from Stéphane, with a daily average of EUR 11.7 billion.
With Monte Titoli, which is part of Borsa Italiana, Euronext Securities becomes a reality and, combined, the CSD of Euronext will now handle EUR 6.3 trillion of assets under custody. There is also a diversification angle in the acquisition of Borsa Italiana, because there are two additional businesses, fixed income, thanks to MTS, and the retail platform and regulated platform of Borsa Italiana, and also a multi-asset clearing capabilities through CC&G. Stéphane will tell you more about that later on, but he has already announced what we are gonna do with CC&G, and for this is gonna be again another powerful move from us.
Ultimately, we are gonna increase our buying power of existing businesses and diversifying with the new ones. Our stakeholders and clients will significantly benefit from it, including all the local economies that are part of the federation and Europe at large. As an example, the Italian issuers will now be exposed to 6,500-strong network of global and local investors, so 6,500 investors available to the Italian community. With Italy, the scale of the platform is bigger, and this will allow, as we heard from Giorgio, not only further organic growth, but also new consolidation opportunities.
I had the privilege to work with the team since day one because I joined the extended managing board and I've been impressed by the energy, the transparency, the teamwork. I've seen also my colleagues the Italian team contributing at all levels and committing to grow together. This is a great sign, and I look forward to continue to do that. We have a great project. In fact, we have great project in front of us. Euronext will leverage Borsa, and Borsa will leverage Euronext for the benefit of clients and stakeholder. Let me focus now on the first of the four project that you see on the slide.
That's increasing the franchise or creating a leading franchise of fixed income in Europe. If we move to the next slide, so we start from a very solid position. MTS, as we have been reminded before, is the number one interdealer market for European government bonds. It's also the number one repo market for Italian collateral and a strong player in the faster-growing dealer-to-client market. Next slide, please. Together, we will further expand this franchise. How? We now can leverage our colleagues from around Europe, and we have been working with all of them on various streams.
I'm looking at the Netherlands, at France and Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, where we have people on the ground like we have had in Italy and in London for several years. This will be transformational for us because our markets, our business is still about network and contacts. To have people on the ground who can talk to our sovereign issuers, to our authorities, but most importantly, to our clients, will benefit our business, especially the dealer to dealer, when we wanna strengthen our position, let's say become Italianize the other countries when it comes to the relationship between sovereign issuers and primary dealers.
Also, we want to make sure we have a direct and closer relationship with the buy-side clients, with the central banks, with the pension fund, with the asset managers, and these are the clients that were making the D2C market a fast-growing market. We will also look at enhancing our data offering. MTS at the moment is very much focused on raw data, historical or real-time, but the strong team of Euronext will allow us to move to the next level with more analytics and more enhanced product. We will keep on deploying new product in order to enhance all the value chain across all our product.
Ultimately, our strategy is gonna be driven by clients, and of course, we'll continue to collaborate with all the relevant fixed income stakeholders, including sovereign issuers, central banks, and authorities. I see a very strong future in front of us, and as Stéphane showed before, there are a few trends that are driving and helping us. First, the strong response we receive from the authorities on the pandemic, the acceleration of electronification of fixed income market, and the ESG momentum, which will make our business more sustainable and solid. We're ready to become the leading access point to European fixed income for all global players, including dealers and clients. I now leave the floor back to Stéphane. I thank you for your attention, and I look forward to seeing you this afternoon at 2:30 P.M., sorry, for the MTS workshop. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Fabrizio. I mean, we are very happy and proud to welcome Fabrizio Testa in the team. He has been with us in the operating committee since April. We can't wait working with you as CEO of Borsa Italiana. Can't wait working with you as a full-fledged member of the Euronext N.V. Managing Board to be part of the group level decisions and also to be in your full job as group head of fixed income trading for the full Euronext organization. Let me spend a few minutes now on the second key project that we have ahead of us, which is the migration of the core data center of Euronext from Basildon, near London, to Ponte San Pietro, near Bergamo.
In order for all of you to understand exactly what we are talking about, we have this short video. As you can see on this frame, we are extremely proud of making this move because it's a natural move, it's a strategic move, but which makes all of us as a citizen of Europe extremely proud of what we are achieving. First, we are seizing the opportunity to fully control then directly manage a core IT infrastructure, which is the data center. As I was saying to Giovanni Gorno Tempini earlier today, it's what remains from the grid, from the Corbeille, the physical part of the exchange business.
We were previously reliant on a third-party provider, and we are now going to be able to expand our presence in the connectivity and colocation activities. In a post-Brexit world, it was critical for us to relocate our core data center, which historically was in Paris, was moved to Basildon near London in 2011, at the time when London was the largest financial center within the European Union, to bring it back within the European Union, to keep it within the European Union and to put it in a country where we have a very large part of Euronext operations now, Italy.
As you have seen in this video, we are making a significant step to move into greener operations by migrating the core data center to a green energy data center. This move will support both our own ESG objectives, but also the ones our clients too, through the scope 3 ESG objectives. For our clients, this migration of the core data center will unlock value because the Aruba data center is a Rating 4 data center, which is the best standard available in the industry. It has really the highest available performance features. It already provides connections with several international network carriers.
We'll be able to provide our clients with state-of-the-art, directly managed colocation services, but we will be also offering several connectivity options for non-colocated clients. This project is definitely a win-win solution for Euronext, for our clients, but also for our shareholders, and clearly for our stakeholders. Because we'll be able to generate added value, but we will unlock immediate revenue opportunities, cost synergies, and we will be able to develop in the future new services within this amazing Aruba facility in Ponte San Pietro.
Our third main project is another migration, and this is the migration of our core trading activities to the Optiq technology platform, the Optiq trading engines, with the migration of Italian cash equities and listed derivatives to the Euronext platform. As you might know, the Optiq platform was fully developed internally and is a best-in-class latency platform with unlimited scalability trading. Optiq has demonstrated its unique resilience in 2020 during the extreme volatility peaks where the platform was able to handle, while 97% of the staff was working from home, volumes of some days EUR 21 billion at the peak of the crisis.
Euronext, as you know, has already an extensive experience of migrating markets to the Optiq trading platform because we did it first to ourselves in the four core Euronext markets. We migrated the Irish market to Optiq. We migrated the Norwegian market to Optiq, moving from the LSE Millennium IT technology. We are preparing in coordination with clients and regulators the migration of the Italian markets to Optiq. This migration demonstrates, as did in the past, significant benefits for clients while retaining a strong local footprint. I'd like to move now to the third migration, which is the migration of clearing and the strategy for clearing.
We plan to transform our Italian clearing house, CC&G, into Euronext Clearing, offering clearing services to all Euronext markets. This is a strategic decision for a company. This is a strategic decision for an exchange, and a rational one following the transformational nature of the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group. Please allow me to share with you the background of the decision because it's a critical move for Euronext. As you know, Euronext is, until now, the only market infrastructure that does not directly manage its clearing activities for cash and listed derivatives. Because 20 years ago, Euronext sold the control of its clearing house, Clearnet.
Today, Clearnet operates under the name of LCH SA and is a company controlled by the London Stock Exchange Group, which has then diversified into repo clearing and CDS clearing. Over time, the Euronext cash equity and derivatives business has become a small part of the overall business of LCH SA. Since 2003, Euronext has been relying on the third-party clearinghouse. We are in a client-supplier relationship for clearing, and we just have a revenue sharing agreement for the clearing of derivatives. Euronext has tried on various occasions to buy back the control of LCH SA. You may remember that in January 2017, Euronext signed an agreement with the London Stock Exchange Group to acquire LCH SA subject to the completion of the merger between Deutsche Börse and London Stock Exchange Group.
This merger did not complete, therefore, the acquisition of LCH SA by Euronext did not complete either. In 2017, we renewed the partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group and with LCH SA for 10 years. I want to highlight here that the quality of the relationship with the London Stock Exchange Group, with LCH Group, with LCH SA has been excellent for the benefit of all our clients. Now, the situation has changed in April 2021, because since April 2021, with the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group, the perimeter of which includes a clearing house, CC&G, Euronext now owns 100% of a multi-asset clearing house. Euronext is now, for the first time, in a position to directly manage the clearing activities and to complete its value chain. Euronext is resolved to directly manage the clearing of cash and clearing derivatives.
As of today, the only available concrete and tangible option to achieve this objective to directly manage clearing is the European expansion of ESG clearing activities. Accordingly, Euronext will grow CC&G into Euronext Clearing, making it the Euronext CCP of choice for its cash equity, listed derivatives, and commodities business. Of course, Euronext will continue offering an open access CCP model for cash equity clearing. This new integrated solution will allow Euronext to ensure the strategic alignment between Euronext markets and the clearing house, which will be critical for our markets, for our clients, for Euronext, especially for the development of new derivatives offerings for which we have great ambitions.
Again, this decision is just the normal consequence of the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group to leverage the opportunities it creates for the benefit of the entire group and for our clients. I would like to highlight several benefits of our strategic decision to turn CC&G into Euronext Clearing and to make it the CCP of choice for all Euronext markets. First, this project will enhance significantly CC&G and we will deploy significant investment to develop cutting-edge technology and to turn CC&G, which is today a focused multi-asset clearing house for the Italian market, into a diversified clearing house to address the needs of all the Euronext flows coming from the rest of Europe.
We have started also a dialogue with the relevant supervisors and regulators to make CC&G more competitive at the European level and to move the CC&G risk model to a new value at risk model. The reinforcement of CC&G will clearly strengthen the CC&G position in Italy, and it will support the expansion of the Euronext Clearing across all the Euronext markets. A single default fund will be set up for all cash equity and listed derivatives markets, and this single default fund will provide significant benefits for all clients compared to the currently fragmented clearing landscape. Euronext Clearing would rely on the new organizations. Additional teams will be created for Euronext Clearing in Italy, mainly in Rome, but also in Milan.
New teams will be created in Paris, mainly, but not only, to cover the specific needs of the commodities clearing. As I mentioned earlier, managing directly clearing activities has been, for years, one of the main strategic priorities of Euronext, and this integration will maximize the value extraction of Euronext trading flows, but it will create mainly, as I said, strategic alignment between Euronext trading priorities and Euronext clearing needs and clearing priorities. The direct management of Euronext Clearing of the Euronext flows will allow Euronext to develop new innovations, especially on derivative products, which is not possible in a client-supplier relationship, no matter how successful, efficient, and cooperative it is.
The development of Euronext Clearing will significantly enhance our CSD strategy by delivering the fully integrating set of solutions to our clients from trading to clearing and from clearing to settlement and custody. As always, like in the case of any migration, this project is subject to all relevant supervisory and regulatory approvals. As you can see, the Euronext Clearing framework will be transformed by 2024 after the completion of this integration process. After the migration of our core data center to Bergamo, after the migration of the Borsa Italiana markets to the Optiq trading platform, the migration of the clearing of Euronext flows on Euronext Clearing will provide the Euronext Group with a very simplified and strengthened operating model.
We are entering into a new beginning, a new phase, and this is the end of the phase where we were recovering from the IPO of 2014, which was an IPO of ad hoc collection of assets without any consistent shape. Now, we are in a position for the first time since the IPO to cover the full integrated value chain. This will bring additional revenue and EBITDA to the group because these migrations, the migration of core data center, the migration of our clearing business, and the creation of Euronext Clearing are a fundamental part of the revised guidance of EUR 100 million of incremental EBITDA, EUR 100 million of synergies.
This is just one more illustration of how the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group has brought a new dimension and has allowed to leverage new integrated value chain for Euronext. Once all those projects are achieved, Euronext will be a much stronger company with a real impact. After the break, because we're going to take a 15-minute short break, I'll leave the floor to Anthony Attia. Anthony has been a key driver of some major transformations with the group. He was the leader of the migration of the core Euronext market on the Optiq trading platform. He runs the development of our primary markets, in particular, the growth of our corporate services business, which is an amazing success with double-digit growth.
He is responsible for the development of our post-trade ambition with the transformation of Euronext's CSDs towards what is the new ambition of Euronext Securities. I suggest that we take a 15-minute break, and that we reconvene in this room in 15 minutes sharp.
Good morning all, and welcome back after the short break. I'm Anthony Attia, the Global Head of Primary Markets and Post-Trade, and I'm very happy and excited to be with you today. I heard we have a lot of people connected on our online streaming platform, processed by Company Webcast, a corporate services company. The last time I talked to you about post-trade and CSDs was two years ago during our previous investor day in Paris. I was announcing the launch of Euronext's CSDs, and since then, we have delivered on it. Now we're ready to take it to the next level. You will hear a lot today about how we integrate, we Europeanize, and we develop our different businesses.
As you know, our Optiq platform captures these realizations on the trading side, and Stéphane just walked you through the same ambition for our clearing business. I will now present our next strategic priority, which is the pan-Europeanization of our CSD business. CSD are a critical element of our value chain. They enable issuance, settlement, and custody of shares of all asset classes. They also deliver post-trade solutions to our local and global clients, and all this creates a sticky digital business. Over the past two years, Euronext has built a large-scale CSD business with the successive acquisitions of Euronext VPS in Oslo, VP Securities in Copenhagen, and of course, Monte Titoli here in Milan.
Together, our four CSDs, together with Interbolsa in Portugal, represent EUR 6.3 trillion of assets under custody across all asset classes, equities, bonds, funds, warrants, certificates, et cetera. Every year, we process around 120 million settlement instructions. This represents 10% of the total assets under custody in the European Union and makes us the third-largest CSD network in Europe. What this means is that we now have a critical mass to be successful in that space for the long term. Let me highlight a few specific strengths of our CSD business. Firstly, our developed and long-standing relationship with local ecosystem. This makes us different from sometimes larger but more remote competitors such as international CSDs. Secondly, our experience and highly skilled local organization.
At a time where local players are looking for economies of scale in the custody chain and where global players launch large-scale offshore operations centers, we are one of the very few remaining places where teams maintain and develop a deep understanding of local specificities. Thirdly, we are turning this unique expertise into the ability to build new services for our clients. Specifically, in the Nordics, we have a strong track record where VP and VPS successfully launched tax reporting or data services that met customers' demand. Last but not least, we run a specific business model, again in the Nordics, where we maintain in our own right more than 5 million retail accounts. CSDs usually only maintain large omnibus accounts for banks, who in turn manage directly the accounts for their retail customers.
Norwegian and Danish retail investors have their account directly with us. Given the positive trend of retail investment on stock markets, of course, this is an important source of revenues. What we have done over the past two years is building a large-scale CSD network. This is, of course, only the beginning of the journey, and I will elaborate in a minute on how we will leverage that newly acquired scale, and our local anchoring to further grow the business. First, I'm very pleased to reveal that today we launch a new brand for our CSD business, Euronext Securities. This new brand reflects our commitment and long-term ambition for that business. Euronext Securities is the CSD network connecting European economies to global markets. Of course, the local CSDs and the local supervision will be maintained.
It is not about creating a unique CSD, but about combining our CSDs into a more powerful brand, which will make our business more visible across Europe. For each CSD, we will give a local color to that brand with a reference to the city where the CSD was established. The single European brand is one of the many steps that we're taking in order to accelerate our post-trade strategy. Let's now move to the 2024 strategy for growing our CSDs over the next three years. I'm talking about pan-Europeanizing and scaling up Euronext Securities. Three key trends on the market. The first is the shortening of the value chain. This is no news. The custody industry, including issuing agents, CSD, sub-custodians, global custodian, is shifted by economies of scale, and they need to continuously invest to follow and anticipate new regulatory requirements.
What we see, especially in the Nordic, is that some local or even regional players may struggle to remain in the business, leaving more room to either large players or to a shortened value chain, where global custodian connect more directly to our CSDs. The second trend is increased demand for added value and digital services. Again, added value services are direct consequences of the first trend, and our value chain is under fee pressure, so there is appetite from banks to outsource some of the non-competitive functions such as tax reporting to neutral and trusted parties such as our CSDs. The demand for digital post-trade services is extremely high and quite intense. But let me make a couple of comments there. 100% of our EUR 6 trillion of securities issued with our CSDs are fully digital.
This means that they only exist as digital record. We believe that the demand for digital in general and the demand for digital assets are very closely connected. Fundamentally, customers do not care so much about having a backend on blockchain technology. But first and foremost, they want to trade, hold, and manage their securities in the cheapest and most efficient way. For us, this means that leveraging the already digital infrastructure we run to meet that fundamental requirements for enhanced customer experience. Of course, thanks to the past investment made on blockchain, we stand ready to introduce DLT in our CSDs when there is a client demand. The third trend, again, is not new. We talk about the fragmentation of the European CSD market.
You've heard about TARGET2-Securities, managed by the European Central Bank, in order to manage common settlement platform. You also heard about the famous CSDR, which aims at opening a competition between CSDs in Europe. Of course, we have multiple standardization initiatives, and some of them are quite technical, but every year they imply that all the post-trade actors need to invest, need to adapt, need to release their systems. Yet, we still have more than 30 CSDs in Europe and as many local specificities. Our industry as a whole is looking for solutions to reduce the corresponding costs. Against that background, what we plan to do is pretty simple. First of all, we want to expand our value-added services to meet client demand across our different markets.
This is already happening, for instance, in the space of general meetings, where we support the industry in organizing virtual or hybrid meetings with live voting. Secondly, of course, we will converge our infrastructure. We have a track record there that led to the many generations of our trading systems and the federated model we have on our exchanges. This is why we have Optiq. Well, we are taking the same type of journey for our CSDs. We are sharing technology investments and building common applications to rationalize our costs and deliver the benefits of harmonization to the market. For instance, we are rolling out a new common corporate action platform across all our CSDs that will replace the legacy applications.
Thirdly, we will scale European activities, positioning Euronext Securities as a CSD of choice in targeted segments for market participants who list and trade on Euronext and want also to issue and settle securities with us. Last but not least, we will focus on continuously improving our customer experience. We have two types of clients. We have global players who are looking for as much harmonization as possible, and ideally one single access to Euronext Securities, and local players, typically retail banks, who connect to one CSD but are looking for local support in local language. We will roll out a differentiated client service. To conclude, this strategic ambition is part of a larger post-trade vision beyond 2024.
Combining our clearing ambition that Stéphane described, the pan-Europeanization of CSDs, and the development of post-trade services, we will become a leading European post-trade provider. Let me now take you through the next key strategic priority, how we are building upon our leadership position in Europe. Starting with our primary markets and corporate services business. This is the beginning of our exchange value chain. Starting with where we are today. There is a unique momentum today, for Euronext, thanks to the combination of our European expansion with the acquisition of Oslo Børs and Borsa Italiana, the opportunities created by Brexit, our deep liquidity pool, of course, and the long-term commitment made to support small, medium, and large companies on their financing journey.
One of the key features of Euronext, if you're looking through the different strategic plans over the past few years, has been the constant investment and the constant commitment that we have made toward our listing business, and in particular, towards helping issuers and potential issuers to raise money. It's about SMEs, it's about large caps, and it's about making sure that we develop this strong DNA that makes us so different compared to other exchanges who have been focusing on derivatives or on data. We are extremely proud and extremely committed to the primary market and the listing business. As Stéphane explained earlier, we are the number one European equity listing venue with 1,900 issuers.
We are the number one debt listing venue worldwide with over 52,000 bonds listed. In 2016, we decided to go one step further in catering to our clients' need by launching corporate services, providing efficient retail and advisory solutions. Corporate services has been delivering a 40% revenue CAGR, serving 4,000 clients across 25 countries. It started as a small initiative, like a startup initiative, and now we are scaling up big time. This leading position is a result of the strategy we've implemented over the past few years, choosing to focus on financing the real economy and to support our clients at each stage of their development across equity and debt and from pre- to post-IPO. Concretely, this means that as an issuer, when you come to Euronext, you benefit from a true one-stop-shop experience.
The acquisition of Borsa Italiana also bring us a new asset, which is ELITE, which allows us to to start a step before the valuation and be more present in private markets. Before diving into our roadmap for 2024, I'd like to spend a few minutes highlighting the key strengths of the different businesses we are talking about here. First looking at equity listing. You've heard this number often. We represent 6.3 trillion of aggregated market cap. This means that Euronext equity markets are twice the size of the London Stock Exchange and three times the size of Deutsche Börse. I'm talking about equity markets here. Why is this metric important? Because it tells you how liquid and deep our markets are.
The larger the market, the more liquid it is, and the more efficient the price formation mechanism will be, as well as the capacity to raise large amounts of money. It's our unique federal model and single trading platform that unlocks this liquidity pool, and it makes our market depth possible and scalable. This is our true competitive advantage, extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replicate, and this is why companies looking for, to finance their growth choose Euronext. Optiq has become more and more part of the pitch to convince issuers to come and do their IPOs on Euronext. It's about liquidity, it's about visibility, and it's about making sure that we support them in the different stages of their capital raising after the IPO.
I can't avoid mentioning the fact that 2021 has been an amazing year from the number of listings point of view. So far we have managed to list 167 new companies in Euronext this year from all sizes with 13 large caps, and we also welcome the largest IPO of the year in Europe. On international listings, more and more we pitch and win against our peers in the U.K. and in the U.S. with 20% of non-domestic listings. SMEs, of course, continue to be at the heart of our DNA and represent over 90% of the new listings this year. Our flagship sector remains our tech franchise with over 700 issuers on the clean tech, life science, TMT, biotech, and med tech space.
We continue to heavily invest in the European tech leaders of tomorrow with our pre-IPO program, TechShare, which now counts over 500 alumni with 76 partners in 10 countries. If you want to know who will be the next unicorn or decacorn, look at the TechShare programs and alumni in Europe. Moving on to debt and funds listing. Euronext is the undisputed number one bond listing venue worldwide, representing EUR 1.4 trillion of issuance amount year to date. We serve issuers from 100 countries, from large corporates to governments. Why do issuers from all over the world choose to list with us? Because we provide best-in-class bond listing execution at competitive rates. We are also the only Pan-European exchange offering domestic and global listing solutions, thanks to Euronext Dublin.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies and public entities needed to refinance themselves, often as a matter of real urgency, speed and operational excellence were key. In this context, we've grown our market share, processing over 11,000 new bonds admission in 2021. Another key strength is our growing position as a leading exchange in ESG bond listing, as we currently count over 870 green bonds, social bond, and sustainability-linked bonds. We welcome the largest and most diverse pool of ESG issuers in the world with over 300 entities choosing to list with us. Now, talking about corporate services, this is truly a high-growth suite of digital and corporate solutions. It was launched, as I said, in 2016 after in-depth survey of our issuers' needs, and they all wanted the same thing.
They wanted neutral, a neutral party, a trusted partner, to provide digital services to help them with their life as an issuer and help them navigating the changes of reporting, of regulation, financial communication, and new technologies. This is exactly what we offer today. It's a portfolio of services supporting issuers in their capital market journey, and it's built around four key pillars, governance, compliance, communication, and investor relations, supported by different business models, software-as-a-service, event-driven, and advisory-based. This value proposition was expanded since 2019, especially in the context of COVID-19, which has accelerated digitalization. The spectrum of clients has also considerably diversified beyond issuers with 75% of our clients that are now public sector entities and private companies. Now, where will we be in 2024?
I wanna share with you a roadmap paving the way for this business to become a global leader. The following market trends are the ones that are driving our development. The Capital Markets Union is necessary, particularly after Brexit, after COVID-19, and we need this to strengthen our European public markets. Obviously, the ESG transition triggers long-term and diverse support needs from issuers. SMEs will increasingly use capital markets for their financing needs. Last, digitalization continues to drive strong demand for tech-enabled services. The scale and track record we've built over the past few years gives us the grounding to now embark on a journey to become a global leader. We wanna attract more international companies, we wanna continue attracting SMEs, large caps, tech companies, innovative vehicles, SPACs, et cetera.
To get there, our roadmap is centered around five strategic priorities. The first one, we call it maximizes the competitiveness of our listing venues. It's about working with our ecosystems everywhere and strengthening and harmonize our offering. We are working on simplifying the listing process in Europe and combining the benefit of a single platform with the strength of a domestic of our domestic centers of excellence. The second strategic priority is to increase our international and sectoral reach. We are the gateway to Europe today. When issuers are looking to raise money in Europe, we are the natural choice for that. Also, our sectoral attractiveness is growing. Borsa Italiana is a leader in luxury and consumer goods sectors.
Oslo Børs has been a leader for oil and gas, shipping and seafood for years. More recently, clean energy and clean technology have demonstrated the attractiveness of our Oslo markets. I can also mention Brussels for biotechs and Amsterdam for SPACs and others. The third initiative is about, of course, ESG. Stéphane mentioned that, and Isabelle will develop the full-scale ambition. What I wanna say is that this is our mission to accelerate sustainable growth. It's also our mission to support our issuer in their ESG journey, and facilitate the flow of capital towards sustainable investment project. We are very proud to announce today two initiatives.
One is a creation of a new climate transition market segment dedicated to issuers committed to science-based targets under the SBTI initiatives, providing a measurable framework for companies to commit to a 1.5-degree compliant trajectory. The second initiative is a flagging of all taxonomy-eligible issuers to increase their visibility to investors, thereby increasing data transparency in the market and making ESG investing easier. Fourth initiative is the continuous reinforcement of the fact that we are investing in SMEs. We are a leader in SME IPOs in Europe, and we want this to continue. This is about financing the real economy. Again, here are two flagship initiatives.
One is on the equity side, we want to expand Borsa Italiana's successful STAR segment in Europe, and STAR is a segment for the Italian regulated market dedicated to SMEs, which commit to best practices in terms of liquidity, transparency, and corporate governance. We will also expand Borsa Italiana's ELITE, the network dedicated to fast-growing private companies to access diverse sources of capital to drive their growth and strengthen our suite of pan-European pre-IPO programs. This will enable us to deepen our pre-listing relationship with SMEs and continue to position ourselves as their key long-term growth and financing partner. Last but not least, we are growing corporate services further. This is the growth engine of this business. We're growing on the product side and on the geographic side.
On the product side, we are strengthening our portfolio by developing adjacent and synergetic solutions, in particular on the compliance and the regulatory areas. One example is a whistleblowing service that is being currently rolled out. The geographical expansion is definitely in Europe, but we are expanding on non-domestic countries from a Euronext point of view in Germany, U.K., Spain, and Sweden. A concrete example of that is our ambition to create the largest network of webcast studios in Europe with Company Webcast that is powering our webcast today. As a conclusion, we believe that investing in this strategic direction will make us one of the world's champion for primary markets on the long term.
I will now hand it over to Simon Gallagher, which has been with us since the beginning of Euronext, and I'm very happy to leave him the floor for the next part of our integrated value chain, our trading business. Thank you.
Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, everyone. My name is Simon Gallagher, and I'm head of the Cash and Derivatives Trading business here at Euronext. Over the next few minutes, we'll talk through three key main areas. First of all, we'll go through our core cash equities trading business, then we'll talk about our equity derivatives trading business, and finally, we'll end with talking through our approach to the emerging crypto asset class.
Before doing so, we'd just like to take a step back and look at the set of trading assets we're assembling by bringing Borsa Italiana and Euronext together. Giorgio and Stéphane spoke earlier about the bedrock of assets we're building here. Really here, if you look at the trading assets we're bringing together, we believe we have something unique in Europe, both in terms of scale and both in terms of quality. In terms of scale, and I'm sorry to repeat it's the fifth time you've heard this today, but we are by some margin, the number one cash equities trading venue in Europe. Over one-quarter of European lit equities trading activity today transits through platforms and technology operated by the Euronext Group. But it's more than that in our equity derivatives business, the combination of these two very strong franchises
Firmly cements our position as the number 2 equity derivatives exchange in Europe, and this is important for reasons I'll come to in the next strategic cycle. Finally, on our ETF business. For the last 3 quarters in a row, we have been the number 1 ETF listing venue in Europe. Really, the addition of the Borsa Italiana very vibrant trading business here with a very, very strong retail participation really brings a scale to the Euronext trading business as Stéphane and Giorgio alluded to earlier. But it's more than this. It's more than scale, it's to do with the quality of these assets as well. What do I mean by quality? By quality, I mean that in all of these asset classes, we're the point of price formation.
What creates price formation is the diversity of flow in our order books, and this is the magic of the Euronext federal model and the Euronext markets. There is no other place in Europe or in the world for that matter, where there is such a diversity of flow brought to one single central order book, where retail flow from all of the seven countries we operate in can interact with electronic liquidity providers in the city and in Paris, with institutional business coming from Oslo and with institutional business from France and obviously with the smart order routers of our big sell side gateways to our market. This is important, this scale and this quality for two reasons.
The scale is important for the very simple law Giorgio outlined earlier in our business, which is very simply that liquidity begets liquidity. The more liquidity you concentrate in one platform, the lower the search costs for investors and the lower the implicit costs of transacting on our markets. The quality is important, and the diversity of flow on our markets is important because if you layer on top of the operation of our markets, intelligent commercial policies and pricing strategies, it enables you to operate a very segmented pricing and fee policy, which enables us to extract yields from this market. Hopefully those of you who have followed our track record in this area since the IPO realize how close to our heart revenue extraction, segmentation, and yield management are to the operation of this business.
Now if we can go to the core cash equities trading business. If we look at the next strategic cycle going forward, there's an obvious the obvious statement here is that equities are going nowhere as an asset class. Equities will remain core to portfolio allocations. Secondly, in broad terms, the regulatory environment we believe will remain unchanged. This barrier between lit trading and dark trading and in the OTC business, not a lot is gonna change there in terms of regulation over the next strategic cycle. We have a stable environment there. Thirdly, and most importantly, the value chain for trading is changing.
Anthony spoke earlier about how the value chain for CSDs is contracting, and this is happening across our industry. It's happening in the way orders arrive from end retail investors, buy-side investors to the exchange. We believe this will create many opportunities for us in terms of commercial relationships and business opportunities, and Chris will talk about those later on. In terms of our roadmap for this business, one thing will not change. The number one priority of Euronext in managing this equity business will be on yield extraction and on segmentation. Hopefully, as I said, you've seen our track record in this area since the IPO.
Really this understanding of end client flows, the ability to segment will be greatly enhanced, we believe over the next strategic cycle by a whole new set of data analytics and quantitative expertise which we're bringing on board. The more we can understand end client flows, the more we can understand price-volume elasticities, and the more we can segment and extract yield from this market. Chris will talk about that later also in his presentation. Secondly, we will do absolutely everything it takes in the operation of our markets to preserve the diversity of flows on our on Euronext.
Retail flow is absolutely key to our markets, and as we integrate the Italian market, we will take great care to preserve the very delicate and liquidity dynamics of the Italian market, where the retail business is particularly vibrant. Finally, but very simply, we will maximize touch points with end buying centers wherever they are. This means going commercially beyond the simple notion of membership, which today sounds like a very nineteenth-century term. We have customers and we have pricing points, and we will maximize our touch points with end customers wherever we can, working in partnership with our big sell side gateways to our markets.
If we project ourselves forward now to 2024, we believe this business will be a very, very exciting place to be in. In 2024, we will have done the technical migration, the functional migration. We will have one data center, one rule book, one set of functional expertise. Crucially, as we said this morning, we will have a single pool of clearing open interest behind the trading business. We believe this positions us very, very firmly in a real pole position for the next cycle of European integration from 2024.
Now if we move to the equity derivatives business. As you know, this is a very strong and stable set of businesses, with very strong options businesses in each of the countries we operate, with extremely vibrant retail markets in, especially the Oslo market and the Dutch market and the Italian market. The key trends here we see going forward over the next three years are as follows. First of all, this inexorable trend and push from regulators and clients for more on exchange cleared business is going nowhere. We expect a strong tailwinds from that.
Secondly, as we spoke about earlier, the emerging ESG asset classes and indices we will create new derivatives families around these around these products, both in terms of our own ESG indices, so the CAC and the MIB, as you know, but also around our AEX ESG Index , where we just launched an options contract a few weeks ago. Finally, what we hear time and time again from customers in the industry is that there is room for more competition in this space. Here again, if we project ourselves forward to 2024, we will have a single trading system, single technology, functionality, and so on.
What is really game changing here in the derivatives business is the integration of clearing and control over the clearing economics. This is important for two reasons. First, as Stéphane alluded to earlier, having a coordinated approach between a clearing house and the trading venue is absolutely fundamental for efficient products, product development and innovation. Secondly, control over the clearing house will enable the business to expand because we'll have one single pool of open interest. If you can just imagine the margining efficiencies between the underlyings on the cash business, where we have 25% of trading, and this emerging and growing derivatives asset class, we firmly believe that in 2024, this will be a real space to watch.
Finally, I'll end up with our approach on the emerging crypto asset class. Like ourselves, you will have observed the huge amount of innovation going on in this space. We've seen new players emerging at breakneck speed, forming relationships with retail customers. What is our take here? Really going forward over the next cycle, we see three things characterizing this area. First of all, as Stéphane alluded to earlier, this space is becoming institutionalized, the diversification benefit of owning crypto assets is by now clearly demonstrated to the market. We believe this asset class is gonna be here to stay. Second, this is gonna be a space which is gonna undergo more and more regulation.
By 2024, crypto assets will have their own regulatory framework in Europe, just like MiFID does for the cash and derivatives business. MiCA will provide a regulatory framework for this asset class. Thirdly, we believe that really the market is looking for more stable and regulated market structures to serve this new asset class. Our approach here for the next strategic cycle really is threefold. First of all, to continue working with the issuers of exchange traded products and exchange traded funds to provide access to these crypto assets. Two weeks ago, we were very proud to issue the first ETF.
Via ETF, this is important because it's fully cleared, and it provides exposure to companies who in turn have exposure to crypto assets. Second, the indices team, which has a very strong track record in providing indices for the issuers of structured products in ETFs, will be developing a suite of crypto indices. Thirdly, obviously, once the cycle is completed, on top of this, we will be launching a derivatives product universe around these crypto assets. To summarize our approach here to this very innovative area, we will do what we do for other asset classes. We will provide a stable, regulated home for our customers to trade these assets in a regulated manner. That was it from me.
Now I'll hand over to my colleague, Chris Topple, who will talk you through some of the data analytics and the use of data, the buy side, and the how important this is for the success of the trading businesses we've just discussed. Over to you, Chris.
Well done. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. My name is Chris Topple. I look after a number of businesses across Euronext. Firstly, I look after the sales organization. I also look after our foreign exchange and commodities businesses and our advanced data services and investor services. I'm gonna be speaking to you about those last two businesses today. After this presentation, I'd like you to remember really three key points around our advanced data services.
One, I think you've heard this consistently throughout this presentation, is that we have the most comprehensive cash equity dataset in Europe. You know, the second one is that we have a vastly expanded set of datasets through the acquisitions that we've completed over the last three years. The third point is that we have a fast growing European ESG index business.
On the first point, this most comprehensive cash equity dataset in Europe, I mean, the numbers, you know, speak for themselves. I know that you've heard those now for the sixth time. Twenty-five percent of the, you know, European equity trading data, you know, the reference price for over 1,900 listing companies in Europe. But why does this matter? I mean, this matters because we are, again, the reference price for investors, for research analysts who are looking at the European equities market. 2.2 million, you know, retail investors, those are up 70% over the last two years, and 230,000 professional investors across more than 110 countries. Again, 110 countries, why does that matter?
Because those are global investors across all these very different countries that are looking to us for the core reference price in these in these European equity markets. The second point I mentioned around expanded datasets. We now have datasets thanks to the acquisition that we completed over the past three years across fixed income, foreign exchange, and post-trade on fixed income. Fabrizio alluded to, you know, real-time quotes on over 1,600 European government bonds. We have the FX data from Euronext FastMatch, which is now published on our market data gateways. In the sense of the post-trade, Anthony alluded to 120 million settlements a year. So a vast amount of data that we can mine and deliver value for our clients.
In terms of our European index business, we already have a fast-growing and robust index business. Again, the numbers speak for themselves. You know, the number one European index provider for bank ESG structural products, you know, and we've been in that position for the past three years. Euronext Low Carbon 100, this was the first and largest Paris-aligned ETF in Europe. Simon also mentioned, you know, the recent launches of our ESG versions of our core national indices. The ESG versions of the blue chip indices that are really in response to the core investor demand that we've heard for further ESG product. Most importantly, for our index business, we run an open source architecture.
When you're running a business like this, I think for the data sources, you really have three options. You know, to build, buy or partner, and we've created the flexibility to integrate those data sources in all three manners. To build, we have the core referential data ourselves. To buy, we have bought, you know, different assets, not necessarily the data assets, but the underlying businesses, be they FX, be they fixed income, to be able to extract that. To be able to partner with the evolving demand in ESG. We need specific partners, whether or not it's on biodiversity, on climate, on temperature, to be able to create the relative indices. Over the next strategic cycle, what would be the key drivers of growth? You know, firstly, the increased demand for advanced data.
Yes, everybody wants the latest traded price of the core market. Increasingly, when I'm speaking to clients, they want to know how the order book is structured, what is the impact of their orders when they hit our order book? How do the closing auctions function? All of that is proprietary data that we have, thanks to the integration through Optiq, and that we can provide back to our clients. The return of retail, again, has been said many times during the presentation, but this is a, you know, a key driver in terms of the increased visibility and also for our index businesses. For retail, the launch of structured products is a key driver of growth for us. The inexorable, you know, continued growth of passive investors.
Again, the key part here is our relevance. You know, these core large tracker funds must be benchmarked to the principal price forming markets in Europe, and those are the ones that we operate. Clearly, over the last two weeks, COP26, it's on, you know, it's on everybody's minds at the moment, the acceleration of ESG and climate considerations in investments. In terms of our roadmap, how will we do this? I mean, we really do believe that, you know, we want to become the number one European ESG index provider. You know, we'll do this building on the national Blue Chip index brands and the Pan-European presence we have, and further expand our leading position with banks and with the success that Simon also alluded to with ETF issuers and asset owners.
To satisfy the increased demand for advanced data is really to further enhance the quant team that we built. We created a team over 18 months ago with leading quant and AI capabilities to really look at the advanced data that we have within the organization and how we can deliver that to clients. It's, you know, it's this monetizing of non-public proprietary data that will be a key driver. Also, looking at the additional business that we've acquired, fixed income being a very, very good example of that. Also lastly, to really support the evolving, you know, market data usage. Clients want to receive data in a variety of different formats now, and across the different asset classes that we offer. We have created an industrial platform through which we can deliver data to our clients.
Really going forward, it's to be, you know, the most advanced exchange data provider and global reference provider for European ESG indices. A key target for our index business is clearly the buy side. I'd like to now walk you through investor services and our buy side franchise. Euronext has been building its buy side franchise over the past three years. We now have a dedicated sales team that looks specifically at the buy side through the acquisition of Borsa Italiana. Fabrizio, again, explained this in detail. If you take the platform of BondVision, a D2C platform, the connectivity with that underlying buy side has been greatly enhanced through some of these acquisitions. The enhanced datasets that I alluded to earlier are being demanded by the buy side.
Our interaction, that direct interaction and that contraction of the value chain that Simon alluded to is very, very important. We have bespoke trading solutions. Lastly, we also have Commcise. This is a company we bought three years ago, cloud-based, fully integrated commission management and research valuation tool. This business has over 2,500 firms contributing, consuming research, you know, interactions. The companies that use it, you know, represent over 15 trillion of the world's AUM. A very, very strong core franchise. You know, aligning with or in a similar vein to what you heard on corporate services, this is a high-growth business. You know, over 25% CAGR over the past three years, and we expect that to continue over the next strategic cycle.
Importantly, again, referring back to data, we have over 1 million annual research interactions normalized and priced on this platform. Again, a key source of data for us to leverage going forward. Yeah, the business itself is, you know, now a fully integrated business of Euronext and is well-positioned for the next strategic cycle to benefit from a, you know, a number of factors. Firstly, you know, a stable regulatory environment. This is important for this. This was set out in MiFID, you know, many years ago now. You know, the importance of recognizing what research is taken by what investor and what they're paying for. There's a continued drive for transparency. The asset managers themselves, they want to know what do they pay for? What research do I receive?
How do I value that and justify that to their underlying investors? Clients themselves, the underlying buy side, you know, they're looking for, you know, flexible technology and service modules. You know, they want to focus on what they're good at in terms of managing their core funds, and they want to outsource the non-critical functions. We're seeing increased demand coming in for that. Data is central for decision-making. Again, for the asset manager themselves, essential to know what data they're consuming, how they're using it, and how they're evaluating that. Within the team itself of Commcise is that ability to recruit and retain key talent for their business. Going forward, I think we want to solidify our position as a real leader for, you know, transparency and innovation in these markets.
W e are recognized as that, and we want to continue that. We want to continue that by focusing on reinventing the software-as-a-service model. In the US, we have a US broker-dealer, so we're now aggressively going after the US market that operates in a very traditional format, and we believe we can be a disruptor there. The rich datasets that I alluded to earlier, you know, we have a huge amount of data within this business that we have now the tools and the leverage, the Euronext expertise of extracting value from data, to take that forward. Finally, really to further leverage the newly extended group. The touch points that we have across buy side, across Europe and even globally, is now dramatically extended through the acquisitions that we've completed.
Really, ambition here is to, you know, be the leading provider of research transparency solutions to the global buy side, the sell side and research providers. As you've heard from myself, Simon and Anthony, I think integration, harmonization and normalization of data and processes is key to the success of our roadmap. To present that to you next, I'll hand over to Georges Lauchard, the Group COO.
Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Georges Lauchard. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Euronext. You just heard from all of my colleagues talking about the business initiative that we'll be delivering over the next 3-4 years. Now, underpinning that are very significant technology investment. Giorgio mentioned some of the costs around that, and that's really majoritarily technology investment.
Now, the question that we ask ourselves is considering those investments, what has changed in our environment, and how can we maximize the investment that we're making to deliver those initiatives? Well, the first change is that we own the end-to-end value chain for the first time. So we have pre-trade, trade, clearing, CSD, ancillary businesses that we deliver. The second thing is that our scale has changed significantly. If I was to give you one data point, so let's assume that you have the largest EU library, which is, for argument's sake, the French National Library. It's about 40 million books. If you were to digitalize the whole library, that's roughly the same amount of data that we produce every week, and that's a lot of data, and that's across all of our businesses.
The second part, and I don't want to bore you, but it is an important part. Yes, we are 25% of the European equity trading. Now, there are some clear benefits of such scale for our clients in terms of liquidity pool, and you've heard Anthony and Simon talk about the benefits for our investors and trading members. There are clearly also some expectations. Therefore, you know, our industry has faced some issues in terms of stability and resiliency is a very significant part of our offering. Therefore, our investment in resilience is extremely important. That is really two major areas. The first one is around our own infrastructure. Whether we talk about our data center or our hardware, we deliver full redundancy in terms of its capabilities.
Meaning that even if we have hardware failures, we are able to deliver the service on a continuous basis. That is the primary reason why we chose Aruba as a Tier 4 data center because it is fully redundant. The second part is that we deliver change on an ongoing basis, and our capability of delivering change and ensuring that this change doesn't introduce software defects in our platform is a key part. Now, to do that, we've invested significantly in daily regression testing of all of our features. We're now at a stage where we are able to deliver on a daily basis in our internal platform and fully understand and be sure that is not introducing regression testing. The second part, particularly around the end-to-end value chain. Here, our core process is obviously digitalized.
Whether we talk about the trading, the clearing, and the CSD. We are processing millions of transactions on a daily basis. The way that our clients utilize those services is evolving. While we are maximizing the processing of our systems, the way that clients are consuming our data is resembling more and more like a software as a service. Therefore, we need to adapt to this framework to deliver those services in this way. What does that mean? Software as a service is successful when clients are able to very easily consume the services by being self-service. Meaning that the client should be able to come to us, create their account, manage data, pay for data and services in an automated fashion. Obviously, to deliver that requires a significant amount of modernization.
We've done a significant investment on Optiq over the past four years, and we're about to embark into the same modernization across our entire value chain. What is a modern architecture? Well, it serves really four purpose. It provides scale, it provides agility, it provides data-friendly architecture, and it provides client-friendly architecture. We talked about the client friendliness. In terms of the scalability and agility, this is really around the fact that we are going to upgrade our platform to be cloud first. For instance, when we talk about our clearing house and us delivering the new platform, this will be an entirely cloud-based platform leveraging latest design in scalability and agility. The second part is around data friendliness.
We acquired a number of companies over the years, and obviously ensuring that we are able to have harmonized common data that is simple to use is a key part of this journey. It starts with as simple as saying a client ABC is called the same thing on trading, on clearing, and on the CSD. It's also evolved in terms of the transactional data that we have and how we're utilizing it. Now, on top of that, we want to make sure that we are enabling machine learning across all of our platforms. Machine learning and the use case around machine learning is typically around understanding patterns around our data, and this is helping us internally in managing our platform, but it's also helping us manage our client behavior.
It's also enabling us to be more predictive in some of the behaviors of some of our clients. I'll give some examples. The last part is that all of those deliverables are changing the dynamics as to how we are able to innovate. Now that we are able to have or we will have, at some point, a easily accessible client platform, the next part of that is to how we are able to deliver more agile product on a faster basis. This is where the fail fast concept comes.
Fail fast is not that we like to fail a lot, but that is the cost of learning from the experience of delivering a product is the shortest as possible from the design phase and conversation with our client to the time that we say, "This is working, and we can scale it up," or, "It doesn't work, and we abandon it." If we go into some of our major programs, we've already started this journey. We've partnered with a fintech in terms of machine learning for Optiq platform and understanding how we're managing our processing. We've just gone live with our liquidity dashboard in our post-trade businesses.
We've been working with our clients over the past two years in understanding how we can help treasurers better manage liquidity. Obviously, I would say the largest part of the delivery are going to be the programs that was discussed before by my colleagues. The first one is the migration of Optiq for Borsa Italiana. Here, this is the first time that we are onboarding a G7 country, and that enables us on one hand to onboard a very strong technology team in Italy, but it also enables us to onboard a number of features, and particularly on the derivative business. You heard from us about our push in terms of product innovation in the derivative business. That is where we're gonna be significantly supplementing the capability in Optiq.
The second one is data center. Clearly this is both an efficiency play in terms of internalizing capabilities that we were previously outsourcing, and it's also making sure that we have the value chain and the information around that, but it's also delivering on our ESG credentials and strategy. We mentioned CC&G and the fact that we will be onboarding CC&G onto a cloud-first technology platform, and that will take us over the next three years to deliver that, but that will then completely change the capability for CC&G to deliver changes for our clients. Obviously, Anthony mentioned on Euronext Securities what we are doing, and particularly on our ECMS program and the corporate actions program, where we are starting to harmonize the capabilities around the securities business.
Now, if I drill down on innovation is not new for Euronext. As Stefan said, we are ultimately a technology company, and innovation is just part of our way of life. Here, I just want to emphasize a couple of points. Anthony mentioned the corporate services business. The corporate services business is, on many respects, a SaaS business, and it's utilizing B2C capabilities to acquire new clients. We are onboarding something like 400 clients per year in that business. You don't do that by simply calling members and saying, "Hey, do you want this business?" It is a systematic approach to client acquisition. The second part is, again, on the derivatives business. We've done a number of different products, particularly on some of our dividend business, and that was very useful, particularly during the COVID crisis.
We talked a little bit about DLT. DLT has many interesting features, and we obviously want to participate in that. But at the same time, the use cases that we see that are credible are around the payment benefit and stablecoin. When we start to look at other use cases, I would say that beyond the exercise of doing an initial minimum viable product, we don't see scalable products coming in after that. What I would say is that I joined Euronext about 18 months ago. I joined from a very large company, a company that invests a lot of money in technology, and I spent 20 years there. Euronext is a great company with a great culture.
The people are passionate, they are delivery-focused, and this is how this company has been able to grow over the past four or five years. What we are now doing is that we are capturing this passion and this capacity to deliver, to enable and leverage the scale that we have to further accelerate our ambitions and further accelerate our innovation. I will probably leave you with one quote. Normally it's my boss who likes to say quotes. It's really around Darwin to say that it is not the strongest, it is not the smartest, but it is those who will adapt to change the fastest that will succeed. With this, I would like to introduce you to Isabel Ucha, who will talk to you about how we are adapting to the changes in the world on our ESG ambition. Thank you very much.
Good morning. My name is Isabel Ucha, and I am the CEO of Euronext in Portugal, and it's a real pleasure to be here with you today. I will now walk you through our strategic pillar dedicated to sustainability and ESG, focused on empowering sustainable finance. This is the cornerstone to achieve Growth for Impact, the motto of this plan. We are transforming this company also from a sustainability and ESG perspective. We will be bolder, we will commit more as a company, and we will be the preferred partner of our clients in their ESG transformation journey. Since 2018, Euronext has come a long way in further embedding sustainability strategy and practice in our organization, covering evermore the three dimensions of ESG, environment, social, and governance.
We have now a solid strategy and practice, based on the input of our stakeholders after a thorough impact analysis that we have carried, and we have defined our strategy around five impact areas: our environment, our markets, our people, our partners, and our society. We have set a clear governance to develop ESG, and we went through a learning and discovery process about how we could contribute more, not only by embedding ESG practices in our own company, but also by developing a suite of products and services for our clients. Huge amounts of capital are and will be needed to transition our economies to a more sustainable world. Euronext's mission is also to make finance work for the good.
We have been creating internal and external awareness by improved communication, dedicated communication to ESG, and by organizing some landmark events, such as the Italian Sustainability Week or the ESG European Summit that we organized in June from Portugal. We have achieved great engagement from our employees, and we have significantly enhanced our communication and our transparency by introducing integrated ESG reporting under the Global Reporting Initiative framework. Over these three years, we have launched an impressive set of ESG products and services across our businesses, and just let me give you some examples, some already mentioned here today. We have launched Paris-aligned benchmark indices, such as the low-carbon Paris-Aligned Index. We have launched local and European ESG benchmarks, such as the CAC 40 ESG, the MIB ESG or the ESG Large 80.
We have launched a green bond segment, which we then enlarged to an ESG bond segment with sections for green bonds, social bonds, sustainable bonds, and sustainability bonds. We have launched an ESG segment for our ETFs. We have launched an ESG advisory service for our clients, just to give some examples, as I said. Our products and services have grown significantly over this period, showing our clear ability to deliver value-added solutions and to anticipate trends and market developments. We are now clear leaders in the listing of ESG bonds with a strong franchise of green bonds, and we have been the number one index provider for structured products in Europe over these three years. More than 80% of all the indices we have launched have been ESG indices.
The Euronext Low Carbon 100 is the largest Paris-aligned ETF in Europe, and our ESG ETFs have grown significantly, now reaching almost EUR 190 billion of assets under management. We have been the preferred exchange for listing of clean techs in Europe with which has been a very active financing market with numerous IPOs and follow-on transactions. This new strategic cycle is designated Growth for Impact because we want to take Euronext ESG efforts to the next level. As such, we are launching a climate commitment for us and for our partners, which is designated Fit for 1.5°. We are committing to the most demanding climate ambition in line with the Paris Agreement, and we will align all our environment initiatives with this 1.5° scenario.
As such, we will become more relevant for our clients, for our stakeholders, and we will further commit as a company. We want to evolve from an efficient, proactive enabler to a strong purpose-led player, and we will achieve this by both improving the measurement of our own performance, but as well as setting clear forward-looking targets. We have progressed significantly on our ESG ratings, but we feel we are not sufficiently visible. We need to be bolder, and we need to step up to close the gap with our ratings and scores with our ESG rating agencies. Euronext wants to lead by example and proactively engage, so we are committing to this 1.5-degree scenario under the Science Based Targets initiative framework. As Stefan said, for Euronext, this will be a bold step forward.
We are working hard to announce our quantitative commitments in the first semester of 2022, and these commitments will be certified by a leading standard setter, the Science Based Targets initiative. What does this mean for ourselves? This will have significant implications on the way we operate, because we will have to reduce, in absolute terms, our carbon footprint year by year until we reach a significant savings in 2030 and until we will be able to reach zero emissions by or near zero emissions by mid-2040s. That means that we will need to change the way we source energy in our data centers, we source energy in our offices. This means that we will have to adapt our travel policy. This means that we will engage with our suppliers, asking them to set climate targets themselves as well.
This also implies that we will be cascading down all these targets and these practices to all our employees, which are a critical part for us to be successful in this ambition. For consistency, we will also embed climate objectives in our financial literacy initiatives, such as the Blue Challenge. As you know, we will be migrating our core data center to Bergamo in Italy. This new data center will allow us to take the first step as a company to substantially reduce our carbon footprint. The Aruba data center self-produces energy from renewable sources only that come from hydroelectric plants and solar panels. When this energy is not enough, the Aruba data center sources energy from certified external providers of renewable energy as well, only.
As a result of this sourcing of renewable energy and the whole conception of the building, Aruba is already a carbon green data center. This improvement is also very important for our clients in colocation, because this will help them to achieve their own climate objectives and engagements. Euronext is positioned to lead the offering of ESG investment solutions through a wide suite of innovative and trusted products. We are developing the number one global ESG financing venue, and we will become the number one European ESG index provider. Again, huge amounts of investment will be needed in the coming decades to limit climate change and to address the social challenges attached to it. Through our products and services, Euronext wants to lead the market solutions that will enable these investments.
The strategy will be supported by a portfolio of business initiatives that will be delivered at a steady pace between 2022 and 2024. Let me just give you a few examples of the initiatives that are on our roadmap. For issuers, we will launch a new Climate Leaders segment and a taxonomy-aligned flag, which will provide visibility or additional visibility to the companies that have the most demanding and the most robust climate ambitions and targets, while we will be incentivizing other, others to follow through. We will continue to grow our ESG bonds franchise, and we will track the 1.5-degree aligned bonds. We will be leveraging this leadership position on this segment to shape or help shaping the standards in this fast-growing financing and investment instrument.
For our investors, we will further develop climate and ESG versions of our national blue-chip indices, European indices, and global benchmarks with a full suite of derivatives attached, as Simon already mentioned. This will help to drive more capital to assets that are decarbonizing, while also helping to better manage ESG risks. On the commodities space, we will explore the energy transformation that is coming ahead, and we will also explore more sustainable agriculture products. With clients at the heart of our ESG strategy, we will further develop a suite of solutions that will help them in their road to sustainability. We know that this transition will be demanding for our issuers, for our market members, for our investors. Euronext wants to provide the best solutions to help them in their ESG journeys.
Just let me give you some more examples. We will service our issuer with the further developed ESG advisory service, which will be complemented by our sustainability reporting guide, which will have a special focus on the 1.5 alignment trajectory. We include an ESG angle in all our pre-IPO programs. We will transform our Italian Sustainability Week into a European Sustainability Week by onboarding more partners, more companies throughout Europe. Just as a final remark, Euronext will deliver Growth for Impact. As I started by saying, we are transforming this company also from a sustainability perspective. We will be bolder, we will commit more, and we will be the preferred partner of our clients in their ESG transformation journey. As I said before, the engagement of our employees is critical and a fundamental dimension of the social pillar of ESG. I will now hand over to Stéphane Boujnah to address how we will empower our people to Grow for Impact. Over to you, Stéphane Boujnah.
Thank you. Thank you, Isabel. Before concluding this investor day, I would like to spend a few minutes on the people side, the talent side, the human capital side of the organization. Just to underline what Isabel just mentioned, what we are presenting today on the ESG front, on the 1.5-degree trajectory, is not an ESG tick-the-box initiative. It's a profound transformation of the organization, and I want to pay tribute today to the people who are running this effort with Isabel, in particular, our General Counsel Sylvia Andriessen, who is responsible for this overall ESG ambition across the group, and also the Head of ESG for the group Sara Lovisolo, who is based in Milan.
This is just an illustration of how important people are within the group. Empowering our people is key to the success of Euronext because it has been the main driver of the transformation of the company for the past few years. This is because we have fast-tracked talents, because we have been very demanding with the talents who are not as motivated as they used to be, because we have been very demanding for ourselves that we have been able to transform the organization, and because we have been very transparent and very diverse. We have today 2,100 excellent capital market experts from eighteen countries and fifty-five nationalities.
As you can see, the level of trust in the future is high within the group. We have done various surveys within the teams, and one of the most striking number here is that 85% of our team members are convinced, believe that we have the right capabilities and the right knowledge within the company to embark into an even more ambitious transformation. I'm very proud of the team we have built over the past five years, because without that team, nothing that you have seen today would have been possible. It's true for the management, it's true for the integration of the teams we have merged, it's true for the excellent teams that have joined us within the Borsa Italiana Group, because that's how you deliver those challenges.
The big difference between PowerPoints and real life is real life. Real life is about people waking up early and going to bed late to make things happen through conference calls, meetings, technology innovation, fixing problems, and that's the most critical asset for the group. We are a very multicultural organization. I don't know whether you can feel it. I hope when you get closer to the company, you can feel it. Let me insist on this point. When I joined Euronext, everyone was skeptical. Ha ha, you have just IPO'd the company and how come your Supervisory Board with so many nationalities, your Managing Board with so many nationalities, your fragmented locations, and by the way, this has not been simplified.
It has become more complicated over the years because we are in more countries, we have more nationalities on the supervisory board, we have more super nationalities at the managing board, and the skepticism was all about those famous jokes about European paradise and European hell. How can you manage such a fragmented group of people? The reality is that multicultural organizations are just much more efficient than single culture organization. What we are trying to build within Euronext is an efficient multicultural organization. Because in a multicultural organization, nobody cares about whether you went to school or what school you went to. Nobody cares about the name of your school because it doesn't ring any bell to anyone. Nobody cares about your family name because if your father is the king in his village, who cares?
That's the fundamental power of multicultural organizations. It unleashes a lot of energy, where the only thing that matters when people are meeting around the table is, are you raising your hand to fix a problem or are you hiding when there is a problem? Are you contributing with a solution or are we trying to blame, to shift the blame? Are you trying to be creative and open-minded or are you trying to do just more of the same? Do you have a track record of delivering solutions or do you have a track record of commenting issues? Do you have a track record of having people following you or are you alone because you are nice with the upstairs and obnoxious with downstairs? That's the reality of a multicultural management in a transparent manner.
That's what we are trying to build and to strengthen. This is a fundamental part of the assets of the company because without that, we would not have transformed a strong SME into the leading market infrastructure in Europe. We have an attractive value proposition to the young talents to join us because when you join Euronext after school or after your first job or your second job or your third job, whatever, you join a company with strong ambitions. You don't join a boring infrastructure. You join a company that wants to shape the future, the capital markets for future generations.
You join a company that, where everyone can have a strong impact, but without being diluted in huge bureaucracy, where the human size allows people to make a difference. By the way, one of the very important human resources or talent challenge is that as we grow further, as we need to strengthen, to enhance all the inner parts, which is less sexy than what you have seen today, which is compliance, risk, supervision, et cetera, we want to make sure that we don't transform ourselves in a bureaucracy. Making sure that we can be a reliable, structured, scalable organization without losing the DNA that we have developed when we were an agile SME is very, very important. Moving the needle at the right point is critical.
It's a company where new joiners learn a lot with our European professional communities. It's a unique organization to be part of the European dream, of the European ambition, to make the European vision that was developed in the fifties, after the Second World War, concrete. We are just an adventure, a venture, an endeavor that is a commercial company, very profitable, a commercial company with a real growth, but a commercial company that has a purpose within the European construct. We are, if you look at Euronext from planet Mars, we are just next to Schengen, to the Euro currency, to Erasmus, to the single market, to Airbus. We are something that Europeans do together to be more relevant in the planet.
That's a very exciting proposition. It's a company where people can evolve and move fast. I mean, one thing we have done several times, which has proven to be successful, is to promote people not in the job of their boss, but sometimes to, in the job of the boss of their boss. We have taken this type of risk, and in the vast majority, in almost all cases, it has proven to be successful. Guess what? Because this concept of gerontocracy was developed very recently. The reality is that there were phases in the history of Europe where young people, young talents, had to take over because there was no other alternative and no other choice.
People, whether they went to school or not, no matter which school they went, no matter who is their father, no matter where they come from, can make a difference and can pass the people who are less motivated. This meritocratic approach or demanding approach of talent management is one of the key drivers of the organization. Of course, we have challenges like any other companies. One of the challenges I've mentioned is how you thread the needle between growing scale and unleashing energy, because you want people to be energetic, but and freelancers, but you don't want their freelancer energy to disturb the rest of the organizations.
Because we have a matrix organization, we are united in diversity matrix, and we want to invest more in our federal model to make sure that people understand that they have a lot of space to grow as long as it is within a proper federal organization. We want to go further in terms of diversity. We successfully delivered the integration of the teams in Dublin, the teams in Oslo, the teams in Copenhagen, and they are increasingly taking more roles within the organizations. We want to achieve the same in Milan and in Rome, and we are happy that some talents have started to take group roles, and this is just the beginning.
I've heard in some Italian media the bit when we appointed 8 talents in June, some skeptical comments. I just want to reiterate here, the more we know people and the more we trust them, the more they have unlimited opportunities within the group, no matter whether they are Italian, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Irish, Portuguese, Belgian, et cetera, or from any other countries in the planet, that's totally irrelevant. We just need to get to know each other and to be comfortable, and that will be a natural move above and beyond the 8 or 10, I don't even remember, names that we appointed for group level positions in the 18th of June.
As we have done in the past, we will deliver the integration with respect for local culture, and that's the way and the reason why it has been successful. We do respect local culture, and as we have also a strong focus on the United in Diversity model. That balance between the fact that each group, each team, comes with its specificity, but to be part of a project that requires scale, and that when some things need scale, like a single liquidity pool enabled by a single order book, empowered by a single technology platform, this is just the raison d'être of Euronext, and that's not negotiable because scale is the condition of strength. When scale is not at the center of the issue, we can be flexible and pragmatic when we believe that local identity is critical.
We need to manage that, and that's, you know what? It's not easy. What I'm hearing sometimes in Italy is that it's complicated. Guess what? These problems have been the same in France, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, and in Portugal since 2000. The same in Dublin since 2018. The same in Oslo since 2019. The same in Copenhagen since 2020. This is something which is very common.
We are going to launch more initiatives in terms of engagement, because we need to make sure that the time we spend in growing, in making progress, is matched with time to make sure that we are not running too far and too fast without embarking and engaging the rest of the teams. Making sure that as the vast majority of the team members are not watching the management, but are not even following the management, but are part of the movement, is critical. We have to continue to be very demanding in terms of performance management with transparency. The best way to be very relaxed about performance expectation is to be totally transparent.
I think we have achieved a lot with our culture of permanent 360 reviews of performance. We need to spend more time and probably more money in developing talents, but because as the group is diversifying and as we have more and more talents who are capital market experts, they need to move from one job to the other. We are doing it okay for top management, for senior management, but probably we need to do more for middle management people to move away from their little market infrastructure silo and capture the opportunities to diversify their own professional life across the vast opportunities created within Euronext.
As I said earlier, scalability is a big challenge, but scalability is all about the fight for deciding where you put the needle between a well-structured, scalable bureaucracy and a very agile, complicated, uncontrolled, but energetic start-up culture. That's the recipe of success and the reason why this management works so hard is to make these type of decisions on a daily basis. A few comments before concluding on diversity. I mentioned that we are a unique melting pot of cultures, which is at the heart of our success story. Clearly, if you join Euronext, as I said, no one will ask you your school, your social background, your sexual preference. You will feel welcome whatever your age, your culture.
This is a, I believe, a strength that explain why we have been so successful. In terms of diversity per se and in terms of gender diversity, which is the most objectivized diversity aspect, I'm very proud that we are doing well. I mean, within the managing board, we are now reaching the 30% gender diversity objective. Within the supervisory board, we have reached the 40% diversity objective. It's very easy to compute, four ladies out of ten. Clearly we are going to go further.
The objective is now to push the 30% diversity objective within the life of this strategic plan, not only at the level of the group, but also in the board of each and in the governance team of each company within the group, and at the level of the full senior leadership team.
We will continue to involve all our employees, thanks to our diversity innovation contest, our diversity days, and plenty of initiatives that are being developed in a very efficient manner by Amaury Houdart, the Chief Talent Officer of the group, who joined us more or less at the same week or the same month as Giorgio joined us in 2016, and who has been really the maker of this culture of transparency, of performance, that has been so critical for the success of the company. Just a few final words in terms of conclusion before proceeding to Q&A.
Just the five takeaways I would like all of you to take with you when you leave this meeting. The first message is that Euronext change of scale has created new opportunities that are unprecedented for Euronext today. You have seen plenty of illustrations of the impact of the change of scale. Second, which is different from the change of scale, Euronext has for the first time the control of the full value chain. It will be done in a open way. We don't intend to create a baby silo anywhere whatsoever.
For the first time, we are in a position to create synergies, to innovate, to be less dependent on third parties when it comes to trading, supporting trading with the relevant technical infrastructure like data center. When it comes to clearing, with moving from a client-supplier relationship to a direct management of our clearing. When it comes to CSDs, where our CSD business have reached the critical size to be relevant in terms of custody or settlement and custody business. This is the second takeaway. The third takeaway is that Euronext is committing to take its share in the fight against climate change, in the fight for reducing the carbon footprint of the economy. You know what? To take a little bit more than its share.
To do the best and the most demanding objective for us. I mean, I've read some analyst feedback after the press release we issued yesterday, and we have. I mean, it's now the third time, so we are familiar with that. Now it's a bit too shy. They're not really bold, et cetera. And when we deliver, we over-deliver on promises that appeared as being too shy. We're used to that. Because equity research analysts are not necessarily familiar with the ESG standards and KPIs, I'm not sure they did get the magnitude and how bold the commitment to the 1.5-degree trajectory is.
Hopefully after the focus on that, they will understand that it is probably the boldest commitment of today. What we believe is that because of our central position, we can influence, we can disseminate the same level of ambitions to the rest of the ecosystems where we operate, just to make the efforts done by the vast majority of the corporates, at least in Europe, more visible to investors. Because if there is a place where visibility between the efforts done by companies to change, to transform their way of operations, to reduce their carbon footprint, can be more visible to investors who look for assets that comply with that ambition.
This is in these type of buildings in Milan, in Amsterdam, in Paris, in Brussels, in Lisbon, in Dublin, in Oslo, and future locations of Euronext. The final comment I want to make is that Euronext will continue to grow. Today, what we have shown you is just the end of the beginning. There is a new phase that becomes possible. There is a new journey. You have seen the financial metrics, you have seen the technology assets, you have seen the business assets, you have seen the people. We are not going to pause now and just manage day-to-day transformation, deliver three migrations, the data center, the Optiq migration, the clearing migration, and go to the spa.
No, we will not do that. We are going to continue growing because that's what we do to feed our families, and that's also what we do to be relevant because we believe that there is a space in Europe for a relevant market infrastructure, which is multicultural. It's not easy. It's bumpy. You have sometimes misunderstandings with local media, with local press. Guess what? These are peripeteia. These are at the fringe of what we are trying to achieve because we build something which is much stronger than our professional life. We build an integrated market infrastructure in Europe to make sure that Europeans are remaining or will remain relevant in the years to come. Thank you very much for your time.
Due to COVID restrictions, we can only be five on stage. I hope one day all these things will be over, but this is what it is for the Q&A. I will invite Isabelle, Giorgio, Fabrizio, and Anthony to join me on stage. Chris, Simon, and George will also be available on questions. They will be sitting on the front row. The teams have organized something very sophisticated to take questions from the room first, and also many questions from the people who are attending in the digital forum. We are very pleased to hear questions from the room and from the webcast. Thank you. To make it effective, I will allocate questions. Not to be over-directive, but just because it's easier for managing the discussions.
Don't be surprised. We will listen to questions. I will allocate them to my colleagues. There's a gentleman here. Can you? I think you have a microphone. If you can just introduce yourself, because we have a very diverse audience. We have investors, journalists, stakeholders. Happy to take your question.
Got it. Thank you. It's Ian White from Autonomous Research. Three questions from my side, please. First up, just on fixed income clearing. I'm taking from the presentations today that internalization of MTS flows on the fixed income clearing side is not a near-term priority. I wondered if you thought the status quo with LCH SA was likely to be maintained over the long term there, or if that was something you might revisit at a later date, maybe after 2024. That's question one, please. Just secondly, wondered if you could provide any detail regarding additional technology investment that might be needed to improve the D2C proposition within MTS.
I'm really interested in understanding how you see MTS offering from a tech perspective relative to the primary competitors in D2C trading in Europe. That's question two. Just finally, within your guidance, I wonder if you could just share a little bit of information about the assumptions you're taking regarding capital market development in Italy, specifically. On market cap to GDP, for example, Italy is among the least developed equity markets in Europe. Do you anticipate some sort of near-term improvement there over the next few years? Or might that be more of an aspiration over the medium term? Thank you.
Okay. What I suggest is that Anthony will take the first questions on the clearing of MTS. On the digital technology and on the capital markets development, on the digital technology we'll have Fabrizio and Georges Lauchard commenting. On the capital markets development, we'll have in Italy Anthony, who is also head of primary markets and Fabrizio. Over to you, Anthony, on MTS.
Thank you, Stéphane, and thank you for your question. There was two part in your question about clearing of fixed income. The first one concerned MTS. Today, MTS is CCP neutral, and this is part of the strong value proposition, and MTS is connected to different CCPs in Europe. This is not going to change. It's part of the very strong value proposition, and we need to remain open on this aspect. Concerning the clearing of fixed income and repos within Euronext Clearing, within CC&G. Today, CC&G is very strong at clearing Italian repos, in particular, thanks to a link that exists with LCH SA, and this link has been created, I think, something like 20 years ago.
Marco Polito, the CEO of CC&G, is here with us. This link is very important for us. Same thing, we intend to keep it and to foster it and to continue developing it on Italian repos with LCH SA. Now, you have heard a lot about our ambition and there's a lot of projects, there's a lot of things that we are doing and we intend to accelerate in the next three years. We also need to be very realistic. There, we have no intention today to expand our clearing of repo in CC&G to non-Italian repos in the next three years. This is not part of our plan. Thank you. Fabrizio, on the digitalization and technology of MTS.
Yes. Specifically, the D2C, where we see most value. We've been investing regularly, and we've continued to invest in order to become more attractive to buy-side clients. Buy-side clients are different from market makers. Market makers still make a huge use of frontend solutions, so-called GUIs. We recently launched new solutions which are quote-unquote, "state-of-the-art", and by far more user-friendly of our competitors. That's why we have been able to grow our market share in the recent years, and specifically in the last few months. The ambition is to continue.
You heard the commitment of my colleagues to continue to invest not only on the existing Govies business, but to go beyond. We already had module for credit, and we are now looking also down the line to add OTC derivative, namely, IRS and OIS. Ultimately, we'll have more loyal buy-side clients with a combination of multi-asset and state-of-the-art technology.
Okay. Thank you very much. Probably from a technology perspective, I mean, you heard me in terms of the changes that we are delivering across all of our platform. The same apply to MTS BondVision. That's part of our ecosystem of changes that we'll be delivering over the next three years, in terms of making our platform as easy as possible and obviously in partnership with our customers. A large part of that development will be a client co-design. We'll be working with our customers to evolve the features that we're delivering there.
Thank you. On the third point, sorry, on the development of capital markets in Italy, maybe Anthony and Fabrizio.
Thank you, Stéphane. Obviously we have a very large ambition for the capital market in Italy. We believe that it's a very rich ecosystem very close to what Euronext has been fighting for for many years with SMEs, with mid caps, with family businesses, tech companies, large caps, et cetera. We feel that there is a lot of acceleration that can be brought by the Optiq platform and by the value proposition on our primary market altogether. Nevertheless, there are a few barriers to lift. Our colleagues at Borsa Italiana are working very hard on that.
We need to make sure that there is no gold-plating in terms of regulation, no gold-plating in terms of complexity of IPO process. These are one of the areas where when we talk about harmonizing the listing process across Euronext market, this is one of the areas where we intend to work on. Fabrizio.
Yeah. I think we have a window of opportunity right now because Italy is really striving to take it to the next step. As Anthony said, my colleagues are at the center of these discussions and are coming up with proposal that will drive the next trend and the next opportunity when it comes to companies coming to market. I'm very positive on one side, the awareness that something has to be done and the window of opportunity which we now have the possibility to take. Watch this space. We'll something will happen pretty soon.
Yeah. If I may make a final comment. You're absolutely right. What is absolutely fascinating in Italy is that you have all the ingredients for a very dynamic equity market and a very dynamic IPO market. You have a reservoir of mature companies or either in the tech sector or in the family business that are legitimate candidates to go public. There was, at the beginning of this year, I think, a survey from Banca d'Italia indicating that 2,800 companies were, in theory, meeting the standard for being listed on the AIM, which is been transforming Euronext Growth. It's not like there is no Mittelstand in Italy. There is one of the largest or the nose-to-nose competing Mittelstand with the German one is in Italy.
The second one is that you have a unique reservoir of savings, so that is looking for assets to invest in. In a world of negative yield on fixed income, everyone is looking for equity assets and equity support for an investment. You have also tax incentives of households that invest in IPOs, and you have a very vibrant community of financial intermediaries, big intermediaries, small intermediaries, brokers, sponsors, et cetera. That, by the way, do not exist at the same size with the same critical mass in other European cities, in not all your other European cities. You have everything, but you have an admission process which is not necessarily the most competitive admission process when you benchmark it compared to the other European jurisdictions.
The good news that Fabrizio was referring to is that there is a profound awareness of the situation by the current administration, the current government, and that there is intensive consultations run by the Ministry of Finance to try and design, in a consensual manner, what could be the right steps to make the Italian capital markets and environment more competitive. Borsa Italiana and the Borsa Italiana teams are legitimate contributors to those discussions, in particular with Barbara Lunghi and Paola Fico and others. As Euronext, we contribute when we are asked to do so, but it's more debate among Italian stakeholders. I'm confident that this process will generate one or more adjustments, a set of adjustments or reform.
The ball is in the camp of a consultation process, as it should be, driven by the teams of the Ministry of Economy. Because like in any democracy, Italian citizens elect people to make these type of decisions, and it's a very intense consultation. We will welcome those changes when they come. I think they will come for the better, and they will unlock probably the most relevant bottleneck. There's a gentleman here.
Hi. Good afternoon. It's Gurjit Kambo from JP Morgan. Thank you firstly for the presentations this morning. Three questions. Firstly, on the post-Brexit adjustments, can you maybe, in your views, what you see are the main post-Brexit adjustments and how Euronext can capitalize on those adjustments? That's the first question. Secondly, in terms of M&A capacity, you know, you've sort of indicated this potential for more M&A. What are the constraints from a rating agency, like, is it net debt over EBITDA or any other metrics we should be thinking about? Finally, on the cost of EUR 160 million restructuring, 50% is exceptional, 50% is sort of recurring plus possibly. But yeah, how do we think about what's the phasing of that EUR 160 million, and how much of that sort of disappears over the next few years? Thank you.
I will take the first question, the post-Brexit management opportunities, and then Giorgio Modica will take the questions on M&A constraints and on the fine-tuning of the analysis of the restructuring costs. Post-Brexit opportunities are. How should I characterize them? Address simple facts. Simple facts. London used to be the largest financial center of the European Union, and now London is the largest financial center of the United Kingdom. It's not going to remain that way. The London regulatory environment policymakers is in the process of designing what will be the new positioning of this great and unique concentration of talents, expertise, resources of in the finance sector in London.
One thing is clear. When you want to address the needs of the few hundred blue-chip companies in the European continent, when you want to address the needs of 450 million citizens and their savings, when you want to address the needs of the financing of sustainable development, CapEx, et cetera, you have to operate in the EU to be regulated in the EU, and it is a fundamental change. That creates opportunities for Euronext.
What is really interesting, since you're asking the question, because I didn't make the point earlier, is that the reason why we are where we are on listing and trading is that in parallel to the Brexit process that started in June 2016 with the referendum, which has created more and more divergence, which is not, by the way, going to stop or to pause, but is going to accelerate further, and there will be always bumpy moments. There was a parallel process of Euronext consolidation. Today, we are in a situation where we are the largest listing venue, we are the largest trading venue in Europe, and we are in a position to address the needs of anyone who wants to be listed in Europe, but in a very liquid market.
Now that we have we are the most liquid largest liquidity pool in Europe, anyone who wants to be listed in Europe, coming from the Euronext market, but also from outside the Euronext markets, doesn't have to debate forever, as in the past, as to whether it's Euronext versus LSE. Now, if you want to be listed in Europe, you have unlimited reasons to be listed on Euronext rather than on LSE. LSE is going to, or London in general, is in the process of designing something which would be probably creative, smart, challenging, impactful, but which would be different from the focus that it used to be, i.e., the largest financial center of the European Union.
This opens immense opportunities for also designing a set of financial centers that are distributed, that don't need to be in the same place. I mean, the COVID, for example, has demonstrated that the world has changed in terms of the old concept. There was this old idea that there is something that cannot be replicated anywhere, which is the fact that after trading, lawyers, bankers, traders meet at the pub and then build a common culture which is so efficient. Guess what? When you don't go to the pub for 20 months, the planet continues turning round. Europe has demonstrated the capability to integrate in a distributed manner interconnected exchanges with their own specificities.
Amsterdam has become a leading city for international listing, Universal Music Group, Majorel, InPost from Poland, and others. Oslo is a very attractive location now that it is connected to the single liquidity pool of Euronext for international listing in seafood, in shipping, in oil and gas, in renewables. I believe that there are opportunities that are a combination of what Brexit is creating for real, and the divergence will increase, and also in parallel, what Euronext has built in this environment. Giorgio, M&A and restructuring cost.
Absolutely. Looking at the S&P framework, this is a proprietary framework of S&P, so what I'm saying is qualitative. You have two key parameters to make the assessment of what is your rating. One is the net debt to EBITDA, and the second is the free cash flow to net debt. Now, today, we are a triple B, and the rating band to which we belong is a net debt to EBITDA between 3.5-4 times, and the FFO to debt between 13%-23%. The next category is a net debt to EBITDA between 2.5-3.5, and FFO to debt between 23%-35%.
Now, if I look at our own assessment of where we are today, we are on the verge of moving from one to the other. That doesn't mean that this is what is going to happen. We will have a review with S&P at the end of the month. The message that I wanted to give is that the leverage is going well, and we are at that point. We will have discussion with S&P to see where we are. I guess that these answer the question. Then I mentioned that we don't want any lower than investment grade. Depending how big the transaction, you can do your computation on how much we can raise further.
Maybe another element to add to that, this is something I already said during the analyst call for the results, is that the financing mix for the Borsa Italiana transaction was set in August last year. In the last more than 13 months, now 14 months, things have gone much better than expected, which has built this flexibility we are discussing. The second element, and maybe I will give a larger answer to cover as well potential other questions, because I'm sure that there are a lot of questions around the under EUR 60 million of costs. The first element is that the under 60 million are one-off, so they will produce themselves only one impact in our P&L. Those are going to be of two different natures. One part is going to be OpEx.
It means that for the next quarters, we will have a certain portion of our costs which are related to the integration of Borsa Italiana. We have already quantified that in around EUR 7 million in the last quarter. We have spent, until today, around EUR 12 million, and we believe that these costs will impact for around 6-8 million every quarter until the bucket of EUR 80 million is going to be consumed. This is going to be one-off in the sense that it is not going to remain when the projects are going to be over, but it is going to be recurring for a number of quarters. There is a second category, which are the exceptional items. The exceptional items are going to be linked to specific events.
You should assume that on average, we will have EUR 15 million, around EUR 15 million per year, but we will have bubbles when specific events will happen, and those events might be related to negotiation. For example, one of the negotiations that is included in our assessment, but clearly I cannot give you the detail, is the one related to clearing. Other exceptional costs are going to be related to costs to improve the team and redundancy packages. This is the overall framework. The question is, how it's possible that your OPEX will increase 1% if you will deliver EUR 45 million of savings? The answer is that it's threefold. First, the costs include inflation.
There is going to be an increase of cost related to inflation. The second one is that Euronext, as we explained, will provide more services which today are not provided, so the costs include the cost of the data center, and the costs include the additional OpEx we will need to have to put CC&G at the level it needs to be to serve all the Euronext market. Finally, we will invest as well, as we said, in the growth of other services like corporate services and investor services.
Thank you. Johannes Thormann, HSBC. Three questions also from my side. First of all, you talked a lot about European being the European player, and I was a bit puzzled that the CSD initiative is just focusing on brand. Why don't you merge those platforms and create one leading CSD because it's basically a domestic CSD and not an international CSD for all the markets. What is the rationale behind it? Secondly, on the clearing, which is surely some interesting aspect of the new strategy, but customers so far can decide whether they wanna clear. How much incentives are you offering them to move the clearing business to your platform? What will it cost you? And if you ultimately succeed, how much do you need to impair your LCH stake?
Is this in your extra cost? Last but not least, on the synergies again, now on the revenue side, could you a bit more break down the 55% of revenue synergies into the different buckets? How much, for example, do you expect from the data center, and how much will be from the clearing? Thank you.
On the first question on CSD, Anthony Attia will reply. On the incentive to clients, Anthony can make the point as well. On the synergy numbers, Giorgio will address your question.
Thank you, Stephane. Th ank you for your question. We had three slides on the CSDs this morning. The first one was the where we are. The second one was the announcement of the change of name, where we thought it was a good moment, a good audience to announce it. Obviously the last one was deep diving into the set of initiatives behind our ambition to pan-Europeanize our CSD. I talked about technology and technology convergence, and also the fact that one of the first steps is to have a common co-production platform.
I talked about new services that will be launched and also talked about the fact that we will expand some of the reach of our CSDs to grab more insurances, more settlements beyond our borders. I would like to invite all of you to come this afternoon in the deep dive workshop on the CSDs, where Pierre Davoust and myself will be able to go into all the details and deep dive on the question. On the clearing front, Brexit has created a shift in the way general clearing member firms look at the way they want to direct their clearing flows. We have...
I think it's at the end of a chapter where a lot of these clearing member firms were advocating for a true interoperability and open access on cash equity, creating a de facto race to the bottom in terms of value proposition and clearing platforms, margin, initial margin calculation, clearing fees, et cetera. Today, what they want is different.
They want in Europe larger CCPs that are covering several asset classes and are able through the efficient management of default fund to create efficiencies for them. The best way to resolve the equation of how to create efficiency for their clients in terms of collateral, how to make sure this is a very robust piece of infrastructure, how to make sure that we are successfully passing the ESMA stress test is to enlarge the base of asset classes, members and markets that you clear in one CCP.
The expectations of our clients is, well, for us to do exactly what we announced this morning, is to have all our cash equity and all our derivatives and the commodity futures managed into one single default fund. Obviously, on cash equity, we will implement open access provisions, like it is today for CC&G, like it is today for our LCH SA, where other CCPs will also be able to capture some of the flow.
Excuse me. Incentives.
Yes. Absolutely. Sorry for that. The fact that we will have a single default fund and a competitive risk framework creates an incentive for clearing member firms to use our Euronext Clearing CCP by a scale effect. It's about efficient margin, and it's about competitive clearing fees. In effect, the larger you grow CC&G, the more incentive it creates in terms of deployment of collateral, deployment of margins for our clients to come to us.
We have an engagement process with the clearing member firms, and we demonstrate client by client how much they can save by working with us.
For the sake of completeness, the decision we have announced this morning is the outcome of very thorough analysis on various fronts, incremental technology CapEx to make CC&G a European platform, discussions with regulators in terms of incremental capital requirements, legal discussions about the contractual framework, transition discussions with LSE, London Stock Exchange Group and LCH SA. Intensive discussions also with clients to secure their support of such a move. These discussions with the vast majority of the relevant clearing members have been extremely successful and encouraging, because they support this move.
If I may add, you have to see the incentive in two dimensions. One is the horizontal one that I mentioned is through asset classes and through a larger CCP. The other one is on the derivative front, whereby integrating our trading and our clearing, we become again a true derivative exchange. That's what Simon Gallagher explained earlier. He creates a very strong drive to develop new product and to be able to attract flows. It's efficiencies and it's additional product as well.
Giorgio, on the synergies.
On the synergies, we do not provide breakdowns. The targets are embedded in the growth rate that you have received. The reason for that is simple, because certain, as I said, the EUR 100 million is not revenues and cost, sometimes it's the net margin of an initiative. This applies to the data center, and this apply to the clearing. What I can tell you is, on a qualitative basis, that what I said is, that close to 50% of the EUR 100 million will come from Euronext engaging in new services to clients, which means, data center and clearing. What I can tell you is that if we compare the two, clearing is by far the largest revenue pool and margin pool with respect to the data center that remains, in relative terms, marginal.
Good afternoon. It's Martin Price from Jefferies. 2 questions if I may. The first was just on the revenue growth target of 3%-4% per annum. Could you help us understand what the sort of volume versus pricing dynamic is within that for the core cash equities and derivatives franchises? So I guess just backing out the revenue synergies would suggest you're not expecting a huge amount in terms of underlying growth from those franchises over the planning period. And secondly, we're expecting a proposal from the EU soon on a consolidated tape. I was just wondering if you could share some thoughts on your views on that project and potential impact on revenues if implemented either pre-trade or post-trade. Thank you.
Okay. I think Giorgio will comment on the first questions about revenue growth assumptions. I don't know whether Nicolas Rivard or Chris wants to take it, or Chris and Nicolas. You can take it to provide an answer on the consolidation tape. Chris first and then maybe to complement Nicolas.
Yeah. At the beginning, I will explain you why it's difficult for me to answer your question, and then I will answer it. The reason why it's difficult is that, especially when you look at the cash business, we're in the business of maximizing revenues, and therefore the mix between volumes and pricing is something that we adapt in a very regular fashion to make sure that we extract the most value. I appreciate that, for you need to understand how it works. I will not give you all the breakdowns of everything because this is not really possible, and this is not the way the business plan was built.
What I can confirm is something that I've been confirming, is that we are not assuming that the price will remain as high as they are today. What we're assuming in the plan, it's a contraction of the margin on the revenue capture for cash. What we're assuming as well is a level of volumes, which is lower with respect to the one that we have seen in 2020. For Euronext, excluding Borsa Italiana. What I'm trying to say is, again, as I said, that this plan does not assume the continuation of a peak in the market as we have seen. If that comes, it is going to be on top of what you have seen and what we have presented today. This is just to give you a general sense because, again, we committed on an absolute level of revenues that we believe we will be able to commit by 2024.
Chris, on the consolidated tape.
Yeah, just on the consolidated tape, obviously we're anticipating the ESMA proposals sometime in November or December of this year. At this stage, it looks as though the proposal will be a close to real-time post-trade tape. Seems to be the, you know, the closest guidance we have at this point. Overall, in terms of the impact of revenue for that is relatively marginal. When we've looked at the possible all the scenarios or assessments or the goals that are trying to be attained by a consolidated tape, the vast majority of those can be attained by the post-trade tape scenario. That's, I think, very much the direction of travel that we believe that dialogue is going.
Thank you for the question. I'm Nicolas Rivard. I'm heading the Advanced Data Services business. Just to complement and build on Chris. Indeed, by the end of the month, we are waiting for the proposal from the EU Commission. It's still a long way to go, and you know it's been a very long debate, and it will continue to be a debate over 2022, with the member state and the MEPs. We've been very vocal from the beginning that there is no problem of consolidation on lit market for equities. The problem relies on OTC and SI, and particularly the data qualities on those markets. Therefore, it's a problem also potentially for fixed income and ETF.
We've been very vocal also that not all that coming from the U.S. should be implemented in Europe, and we should not look at it as a golden source of ideas. We have been very vocal that including trade into real-time consolidated tape is a dangerous path for Europe because it will transform the market structure. We have published very specific research with the quant team on this front, and we have been very vocal on this. Yes, we are continuing to be involved in this debate. We believe that now, as Chris mentioned, there is a question around the post-trade real-time tape. Now, what does it mean concretely? What would be in this tape in detail?
More importantly, how do we solve the data quality issue from OTC and SIs? There are still a lot of questions around the governance, around the revenue share model and so on. It's still open in the air. It will be a long debate, very interesting one. As Chris alluded to, as the impact on Euronext is manageable, we have lots of paths forwards in terms of discussion and negotiation. Still, maybe I'm not sure in three years we'll have the same question in this room, but maybe. But it will be a running discussion.
Thank you. Okay. There is a question here.
Yeah. Good afternoon. It's Dirk Becker from Allianz Global Investors. I have a question on your data business, please.
Can you speak closer to the microphone, please? No, no, it's okay.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Better? Yeah. It's Dirk Becker from Allianz Global Investors. I have a question on your data business. Data business is normally the fastest-growing and the, you know, most valuable part of any market operator. With all the acquisitions you've done over the past years, your wealth of data, I mean, should have really enabled you to grow this business. Yet, when I look at the relative share of revenue, it has constantly been declining. I was wondering, did you not really focus on this part of the business? Is the data that you generate, maybe you can't really monetize it? Or is this a focus for the future? Because I haven't seen much in the plan at the moment.
I was just wondering whether you have any comment on this, because that would probably be a very good, you know, driver to rerate the stock even further. Not that you've done badly over the past years, but.
Thank you.
Could be the next step.
Giorgio, maybe you can take the
That one.
I mean, I can take the financial part of that one. As we explained, a few things. First, when we said assess acquisition opportunities, as I said, we assess them based on a fundamental valuation. So far, maybe it will change, we'd not find a correlation between the price for which those assets are traded. The possibility to comply with one of our commitments, which is to deliver a return in line with the cost of capital, we might come to that. For that reason, we've been doing things internally. Euronext has a lot of data, but the vast majority of the data we have and we monetize are real-time data. Those real-time data are linked in terms of usage to the use of terminals, at least for a significant portion, and those terminals are decreasing over time. Now, we adjust the way non-display data are consumed and charged, and we make it a business which grows in line, I would say, with inflation today.
This is, to a certain extent, the reason why you don't see our business growing at 20%-30%. We have as well a business which grows with that pace, double-digit, which is our index franchise. Unfortunately today it represents a small portion of our total franchise. In brackets, an issue we have is that when we buy other exchanges, we more often than not find real-time data as a part of their offering rather than additional indices. To a certain extent, every acquisition we do, it a little bit dilutes the effort we're doing around indices franchise. The objective is to grow that part to be more and more meaningful in our portfolio, having in mind that we remain open to acquisition opportunities.
Any other question in the room before we move to the questions from virtual attendants? Oh, there's a gentleman over there.
Hi. Alberto Nigro from Mediobanca. Just one question on the Next Generation EU plan. Can you give us an update on the ongoing discussion with the European Commission on the potential use of Euronext platforms to issue European bonds, and if this is captured by the business plan?
Okay. I suggest that Fabrizio takes this one.
Yep. So discussions are ongoing, and the good news is that there is an awareness of the fact that sovereign issuers need a transparent platform in order to run their business. The MTS model has proven among 20 plus issuers how price formation is critical pre-auction, during the auction, and after the auction. Now, is it a decision that will be taken in weeks? Probably not. Now that next gen has reached a good level of outstanding and diversification of point of the curve, we are getting closer to, if not a commitment, definitely the Commission seriously looking at giving incentives to their primary dealers, and that's a starting point.
I got here Maria Cannata in front of us, who was with me, is always with me at this type of interaction with the Commission. When she presents how she's been running this business during her career, of course, they stop and listen, and I'm sure they're doing their homework. Again, fairly positive on them taking a decision in this sense. This will be for us not totally transformational. It will be an addition to the business of D2D government bonds. It could potentially become an equivalent of a French or Spanish market. The Italian market remains by far our biggest revenue driver for dealer to dealer.
They could become a good contributor to the mix. Of course, when you talk about bonds, it's all about relative value, so sometimes you buy one in order to sell the others, or you buy one to hedge the other. You know, overall, we expect and we already seen them trading regularly, both on the interdealer and dealer to customer, regardless of the fact the Commission is giving incentive or not.
Thank you. Any other question in the room before giving the floor to... I think Aurélie is going to read the questions from the virtual attendants. Okay. If there is no other question in the room, then Aurélie, over to you for the first question.
Yes, sure. Our first question comes from Michael Werner from UBS, and it's a question for Fabrizio. Can you please describe the difference you have seen with regards to the different owners of Borsa Italiana, LSE versus Euronext? What are the advantages of being owned by Euronext versus LSE? Thank you.
I will not focus on my old bosses. I had great time, but I look forward. I look at what Euronext is offering. As you've seen during my brief presentation, but later in the afternoon in the workshop, I'll be more specific. We share the European strategy, which will enable us to knock at the right doors in order to bring our services to European stakeholders and clients. The NextGen is an example, for instance. We have been writing to a commissioner, we have been knocking at the door of the European Commission, and we now engage with them.
The other aspect, which for us is, you know, goal, is the local presence of Euronext. Why we've been so successful in Italy? Of course, we talk because it all started from Italy. Because we have a team, the MTS and the Borsa team based here. As I said before, ultimately, business is all about networking and reaching out to stakeholders and clients. Now, as Stéphane, my colleague said, we now have Isabel team in Lisbon in Portugal. We have Simone Huis in 't Veld in the Netherlands, Delphine d'Amarzit and the rest of the team in France, Øivind in Norway, Daryl Byrne in Ireland, and Vincent Van Dessel in Belgium. Their teams are already starting, you know, building those relationships with the product specialist of MTS. This will result in more clients that we onboard and more services that we can deliver to the sovereign issuers. That's in a nutshell why I see a bright future here.
I don't want to answer the question which was to Fabrizio, but, you know, what Fabrizio is telling, what we have seen this morning is very simple. Over the years, Borsa Italiana became more and more a periphery asset in the portfolio of London Stock Exchange, for obvious reasons. London Stock Exchange focused on post-trade and focused on data. The proof of this position of becoming a periphery asset is that when what was at stake was delivering the definitive deal at the cost of selling Borsa Italiana or keeping Borsa Italiana and not delivering the definitive deal, the choice, when it became binary because of antitrust pressure, was very clear. We are in a totally different mindset.
For us, the acquisition of the Borsa Italiana Group is one of the key pillar of the transformation of the group. Today, Borsa Italiana revenues represent more than one-third of the total revenues of the group. When you change the status from one owner who treats you for legitimate business reasons, probably, or corporate strategy reasons, as a periphery asset, towards an owner that treats you as a core asset with this type of decisions that you have seen today, the migration of the center, the migration of the flows of clearing, the focus on the development of some assets, that just means a lot. You are a periphery asset under one owner, and you are a core, the largest asset under the owner, the other owner, and that has plenty of consequences. Any other following question?
Yes, sure. We have a question from Andreas Thoma, from Deka Investment. How much growth do you see from M&A, which is not in your organic guidance? What is your EBITDA margin target going forward?
That's for Giorgio.
Yes. As we often said, because it's true, we cannot predict when the next deal comes, so we will remain vigilant. It's very difficult to answer the question, so I will not do that. In terms of target, there is a target which is organic, which is easily extractable from the guidance we told. Then for the rest, we will seek all the investments that give a return higher than the cost of capital, regardless of the margin. We don't have a specific target as long as the activity or the acquisition is value accretive.
Let's be clear. M&A is an attitude, a behavior. What you have to do to be successful in external growth is to be ready to be absolutely decisive when the decision, when the situation becomes actionable, and to spend as much energy as possible to make locked situations and transform them into actionable situations. That's what we are doing. By nature, M&A is a game of consenting adults. By nature, you need a willing seller and a willing buyer.
We can be a willing buyer, and we are a willing buyer of several assets, but there is no willing seller for the moment. What we have to do is to be, when these assets become available, more prepared, more accustomed to what it means, more bullish in terms of valuing the synergies, because we have done our homework before, than the competition. Because we will never be alone, but we can be better prepared than the others. That's what we have done in the past, for the acquisition of Oslo Børs VPS, which was case studies of being agile and determined.
That's what we have done in the case of Borsa Italiana, where on paper we are not necessarily the best buyer because there were other deep-pocketed people around us. That's what we have to do. That's why we continue to have a four-hour investment committee every four weeks, irrespective of the fact that our flexibility to do transformational deal is not as strong as it was two years ago because of the current leverage of the group. Even if we are deleveraging very quickly and even if a major deal comes by, we will find ways to finance it if we believe it's the right thing to do.
If you want to be ready to do deals and not doing deals, because the M&A strategy is not only the deals you do, it's also about the deals you don't do. I mean, you may remember, for the ones who were around, that, when at the beginning of 2020, there was this debate about the acquisition of BME. We discussed, deliberated for weeks about whether or not we would try to counterbid the bid of SIX on BME, and we decided not to do it, which was a difficult decision, but which we believe was the right decision. M&A is not about being ready to move, to strike, to engage. It's also about being absolutely calm about not doing certain deals.
Our next questions comes from Philip Middleton. When Giorgio says the targets assume a normalization of cyclical factors, does he mean they assume that cyclical factors actually reduce growth? That is, revenue is not 3%-4% organic, but 3%-4% net of some headwinds. There is a question that has been asked by many analysts, including Philip Middleton, Andrew Coombs, and Bruce Hamilton, which is about the phasing of the revenue synergies. Just linking the phasing of the projects that we've shown with the phasing of revenues. Thank you.
Yes. I believe I cannot say much more than I already said. It means that the 3%-4% growth includes a reduction of some of the volumes related to the year 2020. If the volumes will be as good or the market will remain as volatile as it is today, this is going to be an upside with respect to the 3%-4%. I cannot be more specific than that. The other element, which is the phasing of synergies. What I can say is that, in terms of revenue growth, you have the landing point is 2024. What I can say is that 2022, we look at it to be similar to 2021, and then the bulk of the synergies will be generated in 2023, and the remainder in 2024. If I had to do a split, but this is a rough estimate, I would say that 60%-70% is going to be delivered in 2023 and the remainder, 30%, is going to remain for 2024.
On costs?
On cost, what I said is, costs are easy to model because you should assume from the starting point a 1% CAGR, which I explained, the rationale. It's progressive reduction of cost thanks to synergies replaced by investment to provide new services or bring existing services to the next level. On top of this, 1% growth rate, you will need to add around EUR 6-8 million per quarter that will fade away after we have reached the bucket of EUR 80 million, which is the OpEx part of the one-off cost I mentioned. Below EBITDA, we will have EUR 80 million of exceptional costs. It's difficult to be super precise, but again, as I said, EUR 15 million per year.
We will have some bubbles that I cannot predict because are subject to a discussion and negotiation which have not started yet. I cannot be more precise because I don't know and because to be any more specific than that could be detrimental for the outcome of those negotiations.
Thank you. We have one question from Bruce Hamilton. Any change in regulatory approach or rating agency approach, given the move to have a more full-fledged post-trade clearing business with the systemic importance that this carries?
What I can say is that I did not discuss with S&P. My next meeting is going to be in the next weeks. What I can say is that when we did the analysis with S&P, they did run the full stress test on Euronext that was assuming the full impairment of the Borsa Italiana Group. I guess that this is quite a severe test to be done. I don't think that they will do any more serious stress test. Again, we did not have discussion with S&P. In this respect, we have a regular catch-up and the next one is going to be in the next weeks.
Now we have five questions from Arnaud Giblat from Exane. The first question is, M&A. What is your WACC, and what is your net debt EBITDA ratio to remain investment grade?
The first question, it's a question I don't like, but I appreciate that I need to answer. There is not a WACC that applies to everything. What I can say is that when we run the PPA or similar exercise with the auditors, we have a range which is in the range from 6%-7%, but this is an order of magnitude. This is the first question. The second element, I believe that I've been more than precise in the previous question. I highlighted exactly what are the parameters and where is our perception in between BBB and BBB+.
Thank you. With regards to retail, at the Q3 update, your guidance was for revenue yields to normalize in cash equity trading and in post-trade. Today, you talk about increasing in retail activity over the longer term. Are you implying that revenue yields can expand?
I'll take it, and maybe Simon.
No, no.
You can take it as well.
Two points I want to. As far as the targets are concerned, as I said, we are not assuming that the current level of yield will remain. What we are assuming is that excluding the Borsa Italiana part, there is going to be a slight dilution. Then on the rationale, Simon.
Can you hear me? Okay. Sorry, yeah. Now you can hear me. Yeah, so there has been a what we think is a sustainable uptick in retail trading activity on our markets, and this has had a small accretive effect on yield because of the size of those orders. I wouldn't go so far as to make the jump to say this increase in retail will be yield accretive over the longer term. The management of the yield is a far more complex picture, where we manage the interaction of SLP flows to the market maker flow with yield and so on. I'd be reluctant to be frank, to go that far.
Since you are here, pricing at Borsa Italiana, is any pricing adjustments at Borsa Italiana as a result of Optiq migration being factored in your plan? How much will this contribute?
Okay. We're not gonna.
Yeah.
Maybe I take that one. Clearly today, Borsa Italiana clients are charged and operate under the MillenniumIT technology. There is going to be a migration of technology and pricing. But it's far too early to comment exactly how much, because as Simon often explains, we have a very segmented pricing scheme, so the impact on the different client segments might be difficult to comment with an overall envelope, might not be correct at this stage. There is going to be a change. The change is going to apply after the migration to Optiq, but it's too early to comment.
Thank you. On derivatives, what product are you planning to launch once you control the clearing?
Simon?
Yep. Again, this is a question a bit longer term, but we believe there's clearly space for more competition in this market. A natural extension of our current offer will be to pan-Europeanize our derivatives offer today. We've started this program by admitting far more underlyings to our options business and so on. Also what we've been doing is launching more value-added products. We spoke earlier about the push from ESMA and the regulators and customers to have more OTC kind of products delivered and transferred to cleared on market venues. Again, you've seen the beginnings of this with the TRF contract universe we've launched on the markets, and these are extremely yield accretive contracts.
This type of area will continue. Thirdly, the ESG, again, it's early days, but this will be an area of clear expansion in the derivatives market. Then once we're in 2024, we'll be doing a fundamental reassessment of our derivatives strategy more broadly, once we have the clearing capability behind us. I think it's a bit early to talk about that at this stage.
Last, because I mean, the sixth one is about clearing, and we have answered extensively to this. About data, how much of the advanced data services revenue relates to indices? They used to be 5%. Can you confirm that this is still the order of magnitude?
I mean, we do not provide breakdown of growth and we manage the business as one, so we'll not provide the breakdown.
If there is no further question, and I don't see any other question, we are going to have a break for a proper Italian lunch, which will be served next door or upstairs, sorry, upstairs. Then we will have a session at 2:30 P.M. At 2:30 in three groups, one on MTS, the other one on the data center migration, the Optiq migration, and the other one on the CSD ambition. I hope you have registered, or if you have not, don't worry. Join whenever. If you want to learn more about what is behind the MTS opportunity, what is behind the opportunities driven by the data center migration and the Optiq migration in the context of the Italian market, and what is behind the Euronext Securities ambition, this is the right time to deep dive. Have a good lunch. Bon appétit. Good afternoon. Welcome back. I think few...
I don't know whether there are a few people still at the coffee or a sweet, but let's start with the MTS workshop. Quick history of MTS. It started in 1988. There was an idea of the authorities at the time, Ministry of Finance, Bank of Italy, with the contribution of the practitioners. At that time, it was mainly Italian government bonds. The great idea was we like the equity model of order book with market makers that are incentivized to make two-way prices. This is how MTS started. After a few years, because the market makers go long and short and they need to fund their position, also the repo market was introduced.
S ince then, the relationship with the primary dealers via the sovereign issuers has become the way MTS model works. It stayed in public hands until 1997, when it was privatized. At that time, the ownership went to primary dealers. They all had 5% cap on the stake that they could have. Hence the management was the one running exactly the strategy, of course, in coordination with the shareholders and the sovereign issuers. Between 1997 and 2003, there was the expansion of MTS. The team at the time, I became part of the team late 1999. We cloned the model across Europe.
We created from MTS, Portugal to Ireland to the Netherlands, France, et cetera, companies that were running the local secondary market with the local partner or, indeed, with the blessing of the sovereign issuer behind. Only to then start consolidating this platform in London. That's where I was based. The reason why we chose London, because at the time, as we heard before, it was the center of the financial market in Europe and where most of the big primary dealers had their European headquarters. Without spending too much time in this period, before 2006, effectively in 2001, we launched the dealer-to-client market.
The dealer-to-client market came after investors because they were either licensing the data or seeing the data through or hearing about our data. They asked to have direct access to the inter-dealer market, which of course was a bit of a clash. We came up with a request for quote, a competitive request for quote, and this is BondVision. That's how from 2001 we built the franchise of the dealer-to-client market. After a few years, we also enter into the data business because we struck a deal with the primary dealers in order to license the data. We were at the forefront of what MiFID has just asked a few years ago, i.e., to have a pre- and post-trade price transparency.
Ultimately was with the backing of all the sovereign issuers who wanted you know full transparency of the order book. In 2006 for a few months we became part. The banks decided to sell the majority, and the JV Euronext Borsa became the owner of MTS only to then move with Borsa under LSE following the acquisition by NYSE of Euronext and Borsa having the possibility to buy out the 60% of MTS. The rest is you know we're coming to these days where we now joined the Euronext Group. As you heard we now have you know we are in a group with which we share strategy and goals.
You've seen this chart before, but just a reminder, what we build is the number one dealer-to-dealer client in Europe for government bonds. We are the number one when it comes to Italian collateral in the repo market. We are number three, very strong player in the D2C market for European government bonds. The number of participants is growing. When we look at participants, of course, these are legal entities. Nowadays, we started looking at individuals trading because especially with, when you enter asset managers or hedge fund, there are several portfolio manager making use of BondVision to transact and negotiate the orders. I talk a lot about stakeholders and the MTS ecosystem.
We like our sales like to show these charts because it summarizes all the touch points we have with clients and stakeholders. Starting from the outside of this chart, you see academics. Academics make heavy use of our data, you know, from ECB to other research teams of major central banks, asset managers, and in general, fixed income stakeholders. They analyze, of course, our historical data and most of their publications, if you look carefully, you'll see that the data source is from MTS. We have at the top, the DMOs. These are the sovereign issuers.
The sovereign issuers and the primary dealers are at the core of our business because they are the ones behind the model of our interdealer markets. To DMOs, we offer some primary auction services. Some DMOs around Europe, like Denmark, use our platform to issue bonds; others to tap or switch or buy back bonds that they've issued in the primary market or with syndication. This is a growing business. Again, when I was talking about leveraging the value chain, this is an area where we are investing a lot, and we are, thanks to our colleagues in the various European countries, trying to open discussions with the sovereign issuers.
The dealer-to-dealer market are the ones that form the so-called interdealer, and we separate cash from repo. In the area of the buy side, so institutional investors, the relationship, of course, is not dealer to dealer, but is buy side to dealers, and we serve them with BondVision, both cash and repo. We also have a small business in the U.S., which is all to all and mainly focused on credit. The other big opportunity for us stays in the data. Right now, our data are mainly real-time data or premium real-time data product that we sell to participant. We're starting looking into indices and enhanced data packages to deploy to clients and fixed income players at large.
I wanted here to show when we talk about dealer-to-dealer market and dealer-to-client market, what are the protocols, the trading protocols of choice. In the dealer-to-dealer market, you'll have the issuer using electronic systems to issue bonds. Or as I said before, after a bond is issued, come to market for a switch option, so buying old bonds and selling the new ones, tapping, usually they tap new bonds outside a calendar, an auction calendar, or there are situation where they simply, they also buy back bonds. Once the bonds are issued and are available in the secondary market, that's where we play the big role of providing infrastructure for the secondary market. The protocol of choice is the central limit order book.
You will have price and time priority, two-way prices or single-sided quotes, and an order is simply executed when one price is aggressed, or there are prices that converge and generate a trade. This is the core of our central system, and this is where we invest a lot, especially in resiliency, scalability, and of course, latency. The dealer to client market, because it replaces the voice business, is by far less latency sensitive. You have to imagine a portfolio manager needing to buy or sell orders EUR 1,500 million of an OAT or a Bund or a BTP. They will choose the dealers they want to put in competition, send a request for quote.
Our central system, of course, will get back the best price to the client, and the client will execute at that price. The big difference at the moment between the two is the dealer to dealer. With the dealer to dealer, you have full straight-through processing, so it's either clearing or we send it to custodian. In the dealer to client market, at the moment, we don't have a full straight-through process, but this is something that we are discussing with our colleagues in the post-trade. Now, which are our offering? You have seen them before, but here it's a bit clearer. At the top, a banker, which we also refer to as dealer or primary dealers if they are included in the list of sovereign issuers, they have access to all our products.
They are participant in the cash, in the repo, they are market maker in BondVision, they access the all-to-all, and of course, they are license holder of our data. The buy side, the institutional investors right now access three of the four of the five product that we have. Why they don't access cash and repo? Because the structure of the European government bond market at the moment separates the dealer from the dealer to client. This is accepted and works quite well. How are we performing? As you can see, we have a positive trajectory since 2017. This year, and you see the comparison January-September 2020 vs. January-September 2021, we are performing very strongly compared to previous year, and I can confirm that October was very much in line.
We will finish a very strong 2021. If you look at our financials, you'll see that roughly 55-60% of the revenues come from cash. About 25% from repo, and the rest from other, which includes data and ancillary services that we sell to our participants. Strategic ambitions, you've seen in the presentation in the plenary section before. Given the leadership in D2D cash and repo for Italian collateral, of course, we want to maintain this leadership. The current trends on one side, sovereign issuers very active on the market, especially in Europe following the pandemic. The digitalization of fixed income market, electronification, makes us believe that this market will probably continue to be very strong. 2021 was particularly strong.
If we look at the historical series, we could consider it almost as a spike. We have reason to believe that we could see this trend continue for a few years, because of what the sovereign issuer had to do following the pandemic. Also, of course, because of more digitalization. What is somehow putting brakes to performances here are consolidation in the banking sector. Every time, of course, two primary dealers merge, unfortunately, we leave on the table some revenues. Where we see a lot of growth opportunities is BondVision. That's where we are investing a lot as per my answer before to one of you. We are really working to expand our product range from government bonds to credit.
We already have repo and hopefully to enter into the OTC derivatives. OTC derivatives is crucial in the fixed income because if you have a bond, you have a lot of buy-side clients hedging with a swap. The so-called packages are quite popular in the activity of our clients. If we can offer both, we attract more activity from these players. Then data. Data is, of course, a big source of revenues. If we just announce and we move from distributor of raw data, historical or real-time, into added-value data offerings. We already have a few packages. You may have heard the MTS Live.
These are, yes, real-time data, but tick by tick, low latency data that are sold as premium product, and at the moment, are more than offsetting the downtrend of terminal licenses. Unfortunately, terminals are becoming less and less popular, and either when there is a consolidation or simply cost review at in the trading floor, the first thing that go are unfortunately data licensing and terminals. I stop here so that you can address questions and maybe ask for more details on some of the information that we passed. Thank you.
Thanks for the presentation. It's Ian White from Autonomous Research again. Three questions from my side, please. First of all, could you just help us understand, in the total MTS revenue mix, what percentage is FIX or subscription-based versus what is variable or transaction-based, please?
Yeah.
That's question 1. Secondly, on the dealer-to-dealer market specifically, can you help me understand roughly what percentage of revenue or volumes is derived from the primary issuance side of the business versus the central limit order book side of the business? My last question on D2C and the new sort of markets you're looking to enter specifically, can you help me understand what specifically is the sort of new innovation that you might bring to dealer-to-client interest rate swaps trading, for example? To sort of give a bit more context, my prior would be that is a sort of a challenging market to enter, dominated by sort of 2 incumbents, basically.
I'm just keen to understand what the new piece that you will bring to that segment will be, please.
Okay.
Maybe with respect to your first question, and I speak under correction of Fabrizio, what we can say is that the volatility of the revenue capture is much lower than the one in equity markets. I speak under correction. You should assume that in even in extreme market conditions, the revenue capture would fluctuate ±5%, and this should give you an idea of how fixed it is. It's a relatively stable revenue capture. Am I correct?
Yeah. That's correct. The revenue mix, FIX and variables is built in a way that, you know, we clearly stay away from big fluctuation, unless, you know, we drop dramatically below certain levels. But, you know, it hasn't been the case since forever for it. Yeah. On the other question, the primary market activity weighs marginally compared to the dealer-to-dealer or the dealer-to-client activity, in fact, dealer-to-dealer activity. It is, however, a tool that, you know, avoids the dealers choosing other infrastructure in order to carry out their business. Our core part of the revenues and business is the interdealer rather than the primary markets.
The third one, absolutely, we are not entering the OTC derivatives unaware of the fact that there are two platforms where these activities get negotiated, or if I may, get registered, but that's exactly the point. What these platforms are used for, and also the SEFs are used for, are mainly to register trades that happen on the back of package trades. Because package trades are not MiFID, don't have any requirement from a MiFID point of view to be traded within or be reported within pseudo-real time, these platforms are mainly capturing trades done over the phone.
Back to what I was saying before, entering OTC derivatives will allow us to capture these package trade, and the one asking for it are our loyal clients who already do the bond leg with us, and sometimes they have to book the swap leg on these other platforms. We're quite confident that if we come up with a nice and easy-to-use solution, we will capture that part of the business. Yet again, similarly to the primary market, the whole idea is to keep loyal clients more loyal, and hopefully attract more clients on the platform.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. It's Dirk Becker from Allianz Global Investors again. I was wondering how much of your business in MTS is currently cleared and settled through Borsa Italiana, and is there any upside from, you know, internalizing this, or is that basically already done?
As Anthony answered before, we are CCP neutral, and not by choice, but because this is how the market works. If we were to impose a CCP, then we would simply see our business probably moving away. Especially, sovereign issuer will not accept that, because of course they are for a more open type of CCP. Now, if I look at what CC&G received vis-à-vis LCH, there is a slight difference, and of course, CC&G weighs less than LCH. I can't remember. I don't think we publish this figure.
No.
Probably Cassa does. You know, assume that there is a different weight between the two. Something that anyway, it's important to look at more than the outright cash is the repo activity and the interoperability link when it comes to activity in BTPs sees a lot of flows, so collateral moving from Italy to international players and vice versa. I know that I can give you the exact difference, but the LCH having many more members among the primary dealers, of course, when two members of LCH trade among each other, that trade with both legs will stay in LCH.
The Italians, of course, are overweighted, especially when it comes to BTP, so they pass a lot of business to Cassa, but more and more we see the activity with non-Italians primary dealer, you know, increasing.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Martin Price from Jefferies. First question is just on BondVision, and just be interested to know how much of the current investment is going into building out straight-through processing to post-trade infrastructure, and what the potential volume impact could be once that is live.
Yeah.
The second one is just on the ownership structure. Obviously, you still have a few minority shareholders on the register. Are you happy with that structure, or do you see any potential changes to that over the longer term?
When we talk about straight-through processing, especially in the D2C space, we are actually, first and foremost, talking about connectivity to order management systems. This is an investment that we have been doing since 2006, 2007, when the likes of Charles River, back then, we didn't have an Aladdin, but you had Bloomberg AIM, you had some bespoke order management system. We implemented fixed connectivity in order to have these OMS talking to our systems. That, from a buy side point of view, is the key equivalent of a straight-through processing. The reason why it doesn't go all the way to clearing is first because buy side are not a member of a clearing house.
As you may have seen, even if there are some clearing houses offering buy side clearing through agent, there's little take up of the services, especially because of the Basel III rules. Our investment has always been in connecting to OMSs. Once you have a new client, if they use an existing OMS we are connected to, great, because, you know, in a matter of weeks, we have a straight-through with them. The person, the trader on the buy-side execution desk will receive automatically the order to execute. We even now have a auto execution facility whereby from the OMS itself, the PM can dictate at what time to trade with which dealers, splitting the size if the size is too big.
From the order management system, we'll touch our front end and go directly to market and automatically feed back the OMS. After the OMS, the buy side have invested heavily in the middle and back office systems, which then they take care of the settlement. If you think of the big asset manager with thousands of accounts and each of them dealing with different custodians, it becomes almost impossible to create a full straight-through process. What we are focusing now, right now is to see whether we have a solution in that is to see for single legal entities. A hedge fund, for instance, could be a single legal entity who could go directly to settlement or in the foreseeable future to clear. We are not there yet.
Sorry, second question was? It's just on the ownership structure and- Yes. No, there are no... I'm looking at my chairman here. But there are no intention of making any changes. When back in 2006, the bank decided to sell the majority, but they kept roughly 40%, now they're down to 37%. We have five directors of minorities on the board. These are our biggest clients and market makers. They are very much a part of our strategic journey when it comes to launching a new market, launching new product. They are the liquidity providers.
At the moment, I think we found, you know, the right structure to carry out our business, and be supported by them. That's great. Thank you. Okay. Maybe Aurélie, you've got a question from the-
Yes, exactly. Me again. We have a question from Raj Watson. If the transparency offer by MTS is so much better than current primary issuing arrangements, why are DMOs reluctant to switch to MTS? Pretty aggressive.
No, it's a strange question. It's not that a DMO would switch to MTS. As a matter of fact, we have about 21, 22 DMOs who they are not the one using our system. They are the one giving incentives to the primary dealers in order to make price formation on our interdealer market. Different story is why this DMO don't use our primary auction facilities. The easy answer is they all have internal systems, most of the time, managed by the central banks, which makes it very difficult to go and say, "Okay, how about changing and replacing your old system with our system?" As mentioned before, the primary markets would not change dramatically our revenues. They will make our clients, of course, more loyal to our infrastructure.
This is something, of course, we are pitching and targeting. Yeah.
Thank you. Second question is, who are the losers from a shift of primary issuance to MTS? I'm guessing spreads tighten. How do you navigate the political issues around that?
That's a good question, and I think it's probably related to the next gen, because, you know, there have been few articles where some traders were alluding at the fact that by, you know, if the commission would give more incentive on the secondary market, you could probably see a tighter bid-offer spread in the secondary market. Tighter bid-offer spread usually tends to enrich and make the bond slightly more invested. I think the big winner will be the European people who will ultimately pay less or indirectly pay less to fund the recovery from the pandemic. I don't exactly see losers at the moment. We made it in 42 minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Good afternoon, welcome back in our workshop session. I will introduce the second workshop about CSD. Everything you always dreamed to know or to ask, or you never dare to ask about CSDs, this is the moment. I will do a short introduction, and then we'll leave the floor to Pierre Davoust. Pierre is the Head of Euronext Securities, and he's the Chairman of Euronext Securities. This morning, we have shared with you our ambition for our CSD businesses, the launch of Euronext Securities brand, and we have given very precise directions about where we want to be in 2024. This afternoon, we will spend some time to comment about the CSD business models.
I'm talking about several business models because you have differences depending on the country where we have CSDs. We will talk about the industry, including regulation, T2S, and we will also spend some time to deep dive into the strategic investments that we are doing in order to become one of the leaders in the post-trade industries in 2024. Of course, we will take questions. Hopefully, they're gonna be many. I will hand the floor to Pierre, who will walk you through a couple of slides. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anthony, and good afternoon. Today is an important day because the CSD landscape in Europe has been almost stable over the past 20 years. Today, with Euronext Securities, which is not just a brand, but which is an industrial project, we are launching something new in that space that will benefit the open capital markets. What I'll do now is show to you that our CSD business is a very robust and stable business, and that we can create upside in the business, and that's what we will do with our strategy. Allow me to start with a reminder for those of you who may not be familiar with the CSD activity. What does a central securities depository do?
Everything starts with the issuance, where an issuer, typically a bank, a government, or a corporate, decides to borrow money on the capital markets and issue shares or bonds. That issuer or its agents will appoint a CSD to act as the notary of the issuance. The CSD will ensure that at all times, the number of securities issued by the issuer is equal to the number of securities circulating on the market. The second core function of the CSD is settlement. Once the securities are issued, traders will trade in securities, and following a trade on exchange or OTC, the CSD will deliver the actual exchange of securities against cash between the two counterparties. That's settlement. The third core service of the CSD is about custody. Once a trader has bought shares or bonds, these securities needs to be recorded in a securities account.
The CSD maintains the top-tier securities account, and of course, manages the lifecycle of securities recorded in the accounts, typically corporate actions, payment of dividends, payment of coupon, redemption of bonds. That's the third service of the CSD custody. On top of that, CSDs and Euronext have developed a range of added value services towards issuers, investors, traders, and their agents that allow each of these categories of players to benefit from added value. Let's now have a look at the CSD landscape in Europe. The CSD landscape in Europe, it's 30+ CSDs and around EUR 60 trillion of assets under custody. Let me make a few comments on this. The first obvious comment is that this is a fragmented landscape. Since 2014 and the CSDR, it is possible for CSDs to compete across Europe.
Despite that regulation, we still have more than 30 CSDs, each of them having kept, in rough terms, its market share. What this shows is that CSDs are a very sticky business, very, deeply entrenched into their local ecosystems, and it's very challenging for CSDs to compete across borders. The second important comment is that within the CSD space, you have two different animals in reality. On the one hand, you have the so-called international CSDs that are essentially offshore banking platforms that support the way of functioning of international and debt capital markets. On the other hand, you have more than 30 CSDs that have usually been called domestic CSDs, and they have historically focused on their local market only. International CSDs on the one hand, domestic CSDs on the other hand.
The third comment is that out of the domestic CSDs, 21 CSDs have decided to outsource one of their core services, namely settlement, to T2S. T2S stands for TARGET2-Securities, and it is the settlement platform built and run by the European Central Bank itself. That's interesting because despite the fact that there is a CSD regulation allowing for free competition, despite the fact that 21 CSDs share exactly the same settlement platform, we still have that many CSDs, and the level of competition between the different CSDs is relatively low. This again is a proof of the fact that this is a very stable local business. Euronext Securities within the market, it's approximately 10% of the market with 4 CSDs and EUR 6 trillion of assets under custody. Let's now focus a bit on Euronext Securities.
The first important point about us is that we are a large-scale CSD network. You can see the numbers on the left-hand side. They testify that our clients, more than 400 banks, rely on us for one of the core systemic business processes they are involved into, namely the custody and settlement of securities. This creates a very deep relationship between our clients and ourselves as they depend on us for one of their core business processes, and we will leverage that stickiness to build added-value services. Second point is that it's a well-balanced network. We have two CSDs in the Nordics, two CSDs in Southern Europe. We have two CSDs in the Nordics, and I'll come back to that, which have developed a specific business model around retail accounts and two other CSDs that have more traditional business model.
Last but not least, we have three CSDs in Norway, in Denmark, and in Italy, which are of comparable size in terms of revenue. We are well-balanced in terms of geographies, business models, and revenue mix. Of course, underpinning that network, we also have a very valuable asset, which is our team. We have a team of experts in the four different markets, which has a unique insight into how post-trade processes translate in the local economy. That's a unique asset because due to the economies of scale and the shortening of the value chain, which Anthony referred to earlier, most of our clients are now setting up large offshore centers to manage their operations in an efficient way. Therefore, they increasingly rely on this unique pool of experts and talents that we have at Euronext Securities.
Let me now focus a bit on the Nordic CSDs that have a quite specific business model. I think the source of that specific business model is in the so-called direct holding model. In most countries, CSDs only maintain large omnibus accounts for the banks. In turn, the banks maintain retail accounts for their own clients in their own systems. In Denmark, in Norway, like in a few other countries, typically China, the local retail investors have a direct account with the CSD. Of course, the relationship is intermediated by the banks. The banks are doing the custody, AML, provide the front end, and so on and so forth, but the retail investors have their account with us.
We manage 5 million retail accounts in Denmark and in Norway, which is a source of enhanced protection for investors. They are protected against the bankruptcy of their bank, but which is also a source of significant direct and indirect revenues. That's my next point on added-value services. That 5 million retail accounts database is a unique data set that we leverage through a range of added-value services. Data services, tax reporting, tax services, general meetings organization, voting, and channeling of the retail votings in the local markets, and so on and so forth. We know at each individual level the trading history for the past 30 years of each local investor in the local capital markets. This unique data set is leveraged in the form of many services that we provide to our clients. That's for the retail business.
In parallel to that, what's happening is that when it comes to the institutional flows, and in particular, the international institutional flows, we see that most of the Nordic sub-custody providers who were previously the intermediaries connecting our CSDs with the global investors and their global custodians are now exiting the market because they lack scale. As a result, we have more and more international institutional customers that want to rely more directly on our services and our expertise, and that's also a source of growth for us. The last point about Nordic CSDs is that we have a specific pricing model where we do not only charge investors and their agents, but we also charge issuers and their agents. As we operate our own settlement systems due to the retail accounts, we also have a specific price model on settlement.
Euronext Securities in the Nordics, it's a direct holding model which we translate into added-value services and a specific pricing model. Let's now come back to Euronext Securities as a whole, and I'll provide a few thoughts on how we generate our revenues in that large business. The largest revenue driver for Euronext Securities is assets under custody. Assets under custody, it's the financial securities that have been issued with Euronext Securities as an issuer CSD. And it's also to some extent, it's smaller securities that have been issued outside our CSDs, but for which we provide custody to some of our clients. That's the industrial CSD activity. To generate revenues, we multiply assets under custody by basis points. Of course, the unit price, as usual in the industry, is subject to sliding scales.
When it comes to assets under custody and the value of securities, interestingly, for equities and funds, the reference point is the market value. Whereas for fixed income securities, it's the nominal value. You can see on the left-hand side the pie chart that shows the split between market value-driven assets under custody. That's the blue area, a bit more than one-third of the assets under custody. Then, the green area, which is two-thirds of the assets under custody, which is fixed income, where we charge basis points based on the nominal value. This mix gives us a very balanced exposure to the market. Equities, bonds, market value on the one hand, nominal value on the other hand. The second-largest revenue driver behind assets under custody is settlement volumes.
Here, basically, we multiply the number of settlement instructions by a unit price. There is an important difference between how we usually charge fees on the trading and how we charge fees on the CSD side, which is that for CSDs, the value of the trades does not really matter. We charge the same amount for very small transactions and very large transactions. The other important point to keep in mind is that between, especially on the equities market, between the trading, the number of trades, and the number of settlement instructions, there is a CCP in the middle. The function of the CCP is to net trades so as to reduce the number of settlement instructions. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the number of trades and the number of settlement instructions.
We, at the CSD level, benefit from the amortization effect of the CCP. This explains why the number of trades may differ from the number of settlement instructions. The last part of the revenues are driven by a multiplicity of much smaller factors, which include the number of securities, number of corporate actions, the type of corporate actions, the number of retail accounts, et cetera. We have a revenue model which is quite balanced. Assets under custody represent the largest revenue driver. Then we have settlement volumes, and then we have a mix of smaller factors that drive our revenue base. That's what I wanted to share with you today. Euronext Securities is a large-scale CSD network. We operate our business in a fragmented and quite stable environment.
We have a robust revenue model, and with our strategy, we will create upside. For that, I will leave the floor to Anthony, who will come back on a few strategy initiatives that have been shared this morning. Over to you, Anthony.
Thank you, Pierre. Thank you very much. This is a kind of a repetition of what has been said this morning, but I felt it was good also to finish with that before opening up to questions. Our strategy, as you know, is to pan-Europeanize our CSD businesses in Europe. It's actually quite simple. We've learned a lot about the journey that we had in our stock exchanges since the creation of Euronext.
The journey which was about creating common technology, making sure that we continue serving local client communities, making sure that we're partnering with the regulators in order to offer some kind of standardization to our clients while keeping strong roots locally, making sure that we were cognizant of local business model and local specificities, which is what Pierre explained to you. Nevertheless, there are also some common features between the Euronext federal model and the Euronext of CSDs, which is now called Euronext Securities. For the next three years, these are the four axes for investment, for development that we already are working on. The first one is to expand the services. The
One of the key ways to grow and to make sure that we increase our relevance with our local and global clients is to take the burden away from them and deliver ourselves some services around the value chain, around back-office outsourcing, around tax reporting, around data, around general meeting organizations, et cetera. Some of these services are already in place in VPS and they are being expanded in VP Securities.
We want also to expand them in the rest of our CSDs. To be noted that most of these services are non-regulated services, which is also a way to diversify from our initial licenses, and it's a way to develop business models that look like software as a service when it's relevant. The second axis for development is the convergence. So it's about common technology, it's about common best practices, it's about common organizations, a common go-to-market, a common sales process, common data, common CRM, et cetera. So we're not overshooting by saying that, oh, the four CSDs will run on one single platform in 2024.
This is not possible because we have local specificities. We also have a huge roadmap of regulatory changes. What we're doing is we are changing step by step and we invest in common technology. What I referred to this morning was the coproduction management but there are gonna be other standardization and mutualization of modules and interfaces. The third area for development is about scaling our European activities, and this is very important for us because it shows that domestic CSDs can also deliver international services. Again, we need to be very clear. It's gonna be on selected segments where we believe that we're gonna be relevant.
Talk about SMEs in the Nordics, we are talking about bond issuances in Monte Titoli. We want also to increase our relevance in the settlement process. This is about like pushing the national boundaries of our CSDs. The last one is very important, it's to be able to offer a common customer interface, a common customer service, acknowledging the fact that we have very different client population from local retail banks to global custodians. They have different needs, they have different concerns, and they want different type of services.
What we are doing is to make sure that we can serve these clients in an extremely professional way, recognizing that we will deliver a service under the umbrella of Euronext Securities. This concludes our remarks for the workshop. We want to leave some room for questions, and I'm sure a lot of you, maybe online or in the room, will have some. Thank you. Yep, we have a question.
Johannes Thormann, HSBC. Two questions, actually. First of all, could you elaborate a bit more on the technology which the four CSDs are currently using? Put it this way, even if you don't merge those CSDs, what's the final stage? Will they use one common system at one point in time, not necessarily 2024, but I don't know, 2025, 2026, 2027, whatever. The second thing is, in terms of you self-elaborated, there are so many CSDs in Europe. Now you have the chance to concentrate them. If you say, yeah, there are different needs and probably different business models in the Nordic with the retail accounts and in the south with omnibus accounts.
Still, you could say we make a first step with doing one Nordic, one southern CSD, and then go for the next step. What is the reason against that? Thank you.
Thank you very much. I will provide some elements of answer to both your question, in particular on Georges' control on the technology. I want also Pierre to tackle the second point. On the technology, it's very clear that we want to unlock the power of Euronext as a group. It's very sure that there's a point in time where our CSD will run from the same data centers, primary and secondary.
There is a moment where we're gonna have a common client interface, where the modules that are delivering the same type of services, so I talked about co-production, but we can talk about settlement and custody, will run under the same types of technology. Now, we need to be realistic. CSDs are animals that have a very heavy burden in terms of regulatory changes. Roughly 80% of our change bandwidth today is dedicated to, you know, the next batch of CSDR, the next release of T2S, SRD II, settlement discipline, et cetera. What we try to do is to embed common components through these regulatory changes, but it takes time.
What our clients want is to have standardization of interfaces and standardization of access to T2S. This is what we aim in delivering. Now, all these common component that I'm talking about, they won't be delivered for 2024. It will take more time. On your second question about the fragmentation of CSDs in Europe, it's too early today to say that there will be, you know, taking over or concentrating everyone. I will explain why. Simply because there are some activities today that can only be delivered to the local communities of clients through a local license.
The framework we are building, this is why we call it a network. The framework we are building aims at getting efficiencies from working together while continuing managing local licenses in order to be able to deliver these services. Now, will T2S force the consolidation of CSDs? This is an open question. We need to see where the changes in regulation lead us. Pierre?
Yeah. Maybe I can add that in a CSD, you have three things, right? You have the license, you have the team, and you have the tech. When it comes to the license, we could close all four CSDs and open one new offshore CSDs like some of our competitors. The downside is very clear, which is that we lose the connection with the local ecosystem, which makes most of our business today. The upside is very uncertain, and there have been attempts in the past to create new ICSDs, and they all failed. We see much more downside than upside in doing that. The teams, nothing prevents us to work together across the borders, and this is what we have started to do couple of months ago, and this will accelerate.
We can work across the borders and have efficient teams across borders while keeping the local licenses. Then the tech, I mean, Anthony mentioned corporate actions earlier today. It's not by default. If you look at the number one pain point of our customers in the market, it's corporate actions because it's not harmonized. Settlement is already harmonized with T2S. For the large banks, for them, settling in T2S from Monte Titoli, Interbolsa, or VP Securities, it's the same. The next big pain point is corporate actions, and we will address that with a common tech platform to deliver harmonization.
Our model is to keep the local license, but to combine teams and gradually build common tech to deliver the benefits that our clients expect us to deliver without breaking the local soul, which makes most of our business and will continue to make most of our business in the next couple of years.
It's a credibility topic for us as well. We don't wanna promise stuff that we can't deliver. Everything we talk about, we can deliver it. If you look back a few years, all the so-called prediction about the consolidation of CSDs, the impact of T2S, the impact of CSDR, the competition, the impact of blockchain, the DLT, all these predictions were wrong. We do not want to enter into that prediction game, and particularly because this is an investor day.
Yeah. Just on the technology side again, Monte Titoli was, by its previous owners, always described as the low-cost provider. First of all, would you still agree to that point of view? Secondly, in terms of technology, how far are those four apart from each other? Is the technology they run on always different, or, for example, is Norway also operating on MillenniumIT technology still, or what do we have to see there?
Sorry. You, the first part of your question was concerning Monte Titoli, is that correct?
Yes. Is it still, in your view, the cheap cost provider because?
Yeah. I think we're mixing several things here. Monte Titoli is extremely efficient. It doesn't mean it's low cost or it's cheap, and it's not. Monte Titoli is a high quality, high value CSD, which is extremely competitive from a fees point of view, but I would not qualify it as low cost at all. Monte Titoli is more advanced from a technology point of view than other CSDs. Obviously they are kind of a launchpad for some of our new tech that will be rolled out on the other CSDs.
Now, on your other questions, I would say that most of the, if not all of the, domestic CSDs' technologies in Europe is based on mainframe, and it's not MillenniumIT at all. MillenniumIT is just for trading, so this is a completely different topic. We do have mainframe in our four of our CSDs. It's robust, it's resilient, it creates it reassures clients and regulators. Yes, there are some commonalities between our different CSDs. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, gentleman over there.
Hi there. It's Luke Mason from Exane BNP Paribas. Just a first question on retail activity, saw quite an uplift this year and last year in the Nordics. I'm just wondering what you think the outlook there is longer term in infrastructural growth. Just in terms of additional services and potential upside there, which are the main areas of additional services or specific examples that you can think can drive kind of revenue growth? Thanks.
Maybe I can take this one. On retail, there are two different trends which have a different time horizon. There has been an extreme volatility in the retail trading behavior, driven by a small number of very active traders in the Nordics. We have benefited from that over the past quarters, and now this is kind of normalizing a bit. There is another trend, which is a longer term trend, and which we will benefit from in the next couple of quarters and years, which is the trend of retail investors investing more and more in capital markets to save for their pensions. That effect we see it in the two Nordic CSDs through retail investors continuously opening new trading or new securities accounts with us. This is there to stay, right?
The extreme volatility somehow is now normalizing, but the long-term trend of Danish and Norwegian investors putting more of their savings in capital markets, this is there to stay, and we will benefit from it. On services, probably the most important area for us is around tax and asset services. The reason for that is the economies of scale, which are putting very high pressure on our clients. Accordingly, our clients are either exiting the business, or if they remain in the business, they want to outsource everything which is not core to them, and therefore they go to a trusted partner to deliver tax and some asset services to them, and we are there to support them.
When our clients exit the market, then of course their own clients, meaning the global players, they connect directly to us. When they connect directly to us, as I explained, they need some local expertise and services based on that local expertise. That's exactly what we are developing around tax and asset services. I'd like to highlight one other area where we see an important opportunity, and it's around SMEs. SMEs today do not often use a CSD because they are not listed, so they do not need to go to a CSD. There is a trend around digitalization of services to SMEs, and what we see in the Nordics is that more and more SMEs are now coming to us in order to have a kind of digital register of their shares.
Why they are coming to us, because once you're registered with the CSD, the transfer of ownership of shares will cost you EUR 0.50, whereas if you go to a notary, it's EUR 100. If you have to do tax reporting, which you have to do, then it's embedded within the CSD services. We see a positive trend around SMEs going more and more to CSDs as a digital register and digital service provider, and that's another important area of growth for us.
Thanks.
Thank you. Any other question in the room? Thank you. Maybe questions from our viewers online already.
Me again. We have a question from Gregory Simpson. How have the 5 million retail accounts evolved over time? Is doubling versus pre-COVID levels a fair assumption? And second, just to check, from retail investors, is it right that the magnitude of revenues from settlement volumes is greater than the more recurring account-based fees? Thank you.
On the second part of the question, I don't think we can be specific in the breakdown of the revenues. On the first part of the question, we have seen a growing trend of the number of accounts in our CSD. It has been stable for years at both Euronext Securities Oslo and Euronext Securities Copenhagen. Since 2019, and especially since the beginning of 2020, the number of retail accounts has increased significantly. It's a growing trend, and we continue to see growth month after month, whereas it has been more stable in the past years. Thank you. I think we're done. Aurélie, is there any other question? Yes. We have one question over there.
Sorry. It's Martin Price from Jefferies. Just a quick one on the sort of evolving digital asset ecosystem and how you're positioning your post-trade franchise within that evolving space. Any thoughts there would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you. Very good question indeed. We will answer about what we believe would be the impact of DLT on the CSD, because the topic is vast. Euronext has invested in a selected manner into two areas. One is tokenization of assets with our stake in the fintech called Tokeny. It's based in Luxembourg. The other one is in a joint project with some of our clients and partners called LiquidShare.
That provides us with insight on blockchain, on the DLT, and insight on tokenization, including an experiment of LiquidShare with the Banque de France on digital money, which is quite interesting. As I said this morning, we stand ready with this knowledge plus obviously internal investment and experiment. We stand ready to inject a DLT in our CSDs when we have clients or customers' demand. The issue is that today we don't have a specific demand from our clients, except the fact that some of them would like to
To continue experimenting. The reality, as we said this morning, is that CSDs are already digital vehicles. The case, because it's liquid assets, because it's highly regulated, because it's an existing post-trade chain with the clients, to move everyone, because you need to move everyone or no one to the DLT, simply does not exist today. It might exist tomorrow, I'm not saying it won't. We need to make sure that there is an incentive to do so, and that the regulation is following.
Because today, so far between T2S, which is already a ledger, and CSDR, which implies that you need to centralize some of the functions, it's simply not compatible with DLT. Again, we stand ready. So far, what we've seen is more for less liquid or less regulated assets. Maybe, Pierre, you wanna add your view.
I think the important point to keep in mind is that CSD is a license, a team and a tech, and we are already used to to use external platforms, and T2S is a very good example. We have outsourced our core business, our core function to an external platform. Which is not a blockchain, of course, but which is a common utility developed by the European Central Bank. The simple idea to use a shared infrastructure or shared tech infrastructure to deliver our functions is not an issue. We are already used to do it, right? And we believe there is a clear difference between what tech you use and which service and which function you deliver to the market.
What we deliver to the market is the integrity of the issue, it's the settlement finality, and it's the golden source of records for the securities accounts, right? Doing that on our own system or on an external system, that's for us to decide and to see. The principle to use an external platform is not an issue per se, because we are already doing it with TARGET2-Securities.
We've been, I mean, following with attention an interesting development in France called ID2S, which was a fully blockchain-based licensed CSD that has been created by Orange, by the way, by a corporate in order to support an initiative which was related to short-term commercial paper. They've done everything the right way with the technology, with the license, with the team. A few weeks ago, they had to close down the initiative because there was simply no volume, there was no critical mass and no reason for clients to migrate there. It takes much longer than what everyone was expecting a few years ago.
The best that we can do as a listed company, as Euronext and as operators of heavily regulated franchises, is to get ready and to press the button when the time is right.
Great. Thank you.
What a success. You have a second question from Andrew Coombs. Can you provide where lessons learned from Interbolsa have been applied to VPS and VP Securities and vice versa? Likewise, anything in Monte Titoli that can be applied elsewhere? I just remind you that we are one minute late, so for the sake of time.
We're gonna be extremely quick. As I said before, Monte Titoli is a very successful CSD from the point of view of the relationship with T2S. That's something that we wanna get inspired from. Monte Titoli has been very good and strong as well in terms of robotics. And to some extent with machine learning around some of the services they deliver to their clients, is something that we're gonna roll out to all the CSDs. On Interbolsa, I mean, we have Isabel Ucha, the CEO of Interbolsa here. Interbolsa has been an amazing CSD from the point of view of being extremely efficient. That's the DNA of Euronext.
Again, we've been using that experience when we integrated VP Securities and VPS. I mean, there's a long list. I don't know if Pierre wants to add anything. But no. Okay. We're gonna have to stop the workshop now. I want to thank you all for your great questions and for listening to our presentation. We will hand it over after a short break, I guess, to the last workshop of the day. Thank you very much.
Okay. Good afternoon again. We're just gonna restart the session. This time we'll be covering the data center and the Optiq migration. The reason why you have this duo of Simon and myself is that on one side, the data center and the Optiq migration are very significant technology investment. Probably our largest technology investment, I would say, in this whole program. The impact that it has on the trading microstructure are also significant.
Simon will walk through this, you know, as we go through the sessions. I mean, we clearly live it all the time, but I'll probably spend a little bit of time explaining what is a data center for us, what it provides in terms of services, and then obviously understanding like, you know, what is then the impact of that. A data center is really the modern-day trading pit. Two floor above, you have the trading pit, the old trading pit of Borsa Italiana, which essentially is a large space where traders used to interact with each other, and provide each other prices and so on.
Those traders would get communication from runners that used to go to the brokers and get a ticket and say, "A client wants to buy this, a client wants to sell that." Well, the pit is essentially the matching engine of a data center. The runner is essentially the connectivity of that same data center. That's really the services and how it transposes between old way of doing and a modern way of doing it. Now, a data center provides really four different functionality. It provides power. To give you a sense, again, it's all useful context, but we are consuming roughly 1 MW of power for the data center that we have at the moment, and that approximately is the equivalent of 1,000 houses running.
This is why power consumption is a very important component because it's such a significant part of this process. The second part is that obviously this room is full of computers, and computers provide heat, and therefore the other key component is the cooling system of a data center to actually cool down the computers that are heating the data center powered in the first place. The third one is the connectivity, and then the fourth one is the security, both in terms of the cyber security and physical security of a data center. Why did we choose Aruba as a provider of a data center? Well, the first thing is that Aruba provides a Tier 4 data center.
A Tier 4 essentially means that every single part of what I just described, whether it is power, cooling, connectivity, or security, is fully redundant. We have 2 power access, we have 2 cooling system, we have generators that are in a redundant, we have infrastructure that if it fails, it can just be immediately picked up. That's what a Tier 4 data center provides us. The second thing is that when we discussed with Aruba, it was very clear that green and ESG was at the center of their ethos and their culture. I'll talk a little bit later about what does it mean and how they are addressing that.
In terms of why we then did this move, Stefan mentioned this morning that we essentially in a post-purchase environment made a decision to move. There are clearly also some key benefits for us to have another component of our value chain. Here it's really the understanding of how our clients are using precisely our data center and the connectivity to our matching engine that makes a difference. With that, I will pass it on to Simon, who will walk us through the impact from a business perspective.
Thank you, Georges. Right. We'll just spend a few moments talking about the sort of the impact on the trading business of this data center move, because it is not trivial by any means. As we've discussed this morning, and Georges has said, we're no longer living in the world of the trading pit and the runner, but we're living in a world where microseconds and nanoseconds are the questions of, you know, the profitability for our customers. What this means is that location is important, and it matters. If you look at this very simple map of Europe, this shows where amongst the main regulated markets in Europe and amongst the main MTFs, where physically the volumes are taking place.
These are year-to-date ADV numbers for the main market. This is not the legal booking of the trade, but this is physically where the orders are matched. Before this data center move, really, there was a nexus of data centers, and there still is a very important nexus of data centers in and around the city of London and the south of England. What will happen after the data center migration is an extremely big move in where these trades are taking place. Across this big map, there will be almost EUR 8 billion of average daily value traded for cash equities.
We'll use the example here, moving from the UK, from the south of England to Bergamo and being added to the volumes of the Italian market. Why is this important? In the UK today, the two markets which are located nearest to the competing MTFs are the LSE and Euronext. The Euronext market will move away from the UK, away from the competing MTFs to Bergamo. If we look at the map of Europe tomorrow, there will be a bifurcation, we believe, of two regions which will manage equities trading in Europe.
The UK obviously will remain a very important center for trading in the South of England with the EUR 5.5 billion being done on the LSEG and 10 billion being done on the alternative MTFs. What will happen is that over 10 billion, as we discussed this morning, will move to Bergamo, and there will be a triangle of geography where Bergamo will have 10 billion, the Frankfurt exchange has roughly 5 billion of average daily traded, and then the Swiss, which is an important market outside the EU, but not shown here, which has 3 billion a day. After this move, approximately 15 billion a day will be done physically in the south of England, and over 18 billion will be done in the triangle of Frankfurt, Bergamo, and Zurich.
The billion-dollar question we're all asking ourselves, what does this mean in concrete terms for the trading business, for market share, and for revenues? The first, you know, frustrating answer here is that there is simply no precedent in recent years for this type of move. We can say with certainty two things. The first thing is that if you look at data centers which tend to be located east of London, so towards Eastern Europe, these markets tend, and this is empirically proven, to benefit from a very small market share premium compared to the markets which are located near to the competing MTFs in the London region.
If you look at the Frankfurt market, the Swiss market and even our own Italian market, there is a small market share premium for this. Why is this? This is because the big electronic liquidity providers find it far more difficult to undertake latency arbitrage between the two markets. When the two markets are within a few kilometers of each other, there is a certain amount of trading volumes which takes place, which is latency arbitrage from what we used to call high frequency traders and now more that we call them electronic liquidity providers. This type of volume, we're pretty certain will reduce once the Euronext data center moves to Bergamo.
We roughly expect, you know, what we can give is orders of magnitude and a direction. In terms of market share, looking at the empirical evidence of our peers and our own Italian market, you know, directionally, probably a small uptick in market share from this phenomenon. The second thing we know is that the dynamics of liquidity and the order book behavior will doubtless adjust to the location. It's really not.
We can take questions offline, and it's far too technical for today, but the way the big owners of the big smart order routers, so the big tier one investment banks tend to be located in the U.K., the way they send their orders to the more distant Euronext market now will change. We're in the process of studying in great detail the dynamics of the Italian market and one example we see today is that the Italian market tends to have a bit bigger trade sizes for passive orders when they're sent to the Italian market compared to U.K. markets.
This is because there's a slightly longer latency between the bank server located in London to reach Bergamo, and then to compensate for the certainty of execution, they tend to send bigger orders so they make sure they get filled once they're in Italy. There will be some small adjustments in the nature of the liquidity of the Euronext market once it moves. This is why there's a small degree of uncertainty around the real microstructure impact of this. Directionally, we think this is a pretty good move for the liquidity of the combined Euronext and Borsa markets.
Please don't forget that on top of this, the prime determinants of market quality and market behavior are the obligations we and the pricing structures we've put in place for our liquidity partners and for our customers. There will be some small adjustments commercially, which will probably far outweigh any of these latency issues. There will be a change to our markets, which we see as directionally slightly positive. If we just move to the next slide, we'll discuss in high-level terms the commercials of this new business for Euronext.
As we spoke about this morning, internalizing the control of our own data center and having sovereignty over the policies to do with our data center will create a sustainable and recurrent and relatively non-volume correlated and material source of new revenues for Euronext. Just as we apply to the trading businesses, here we have applied you know a classical segmented approach to the data center pricing policy. The big difference here in pricing was between customers who believe that for them, latency is important will pay premium prices because they will be co-located in the data center.
Whereas customers for whom latency is less important, who wish to access the data center from outside or even beyond the Italian region, will pay relatively less. In concrete terms, what are we charging here? This is basically a you know a very material business in its own right. In very simple terms, I'm not an IT person, Georges, maybe you can provide some color here, but we're charging space. Each time a customer wishes to co-locate their server next to the core matching engine, they pay physically for the space in the data center, and they also pay for the power consumed by that data center, and they can go up to 18 kW of power.
Maybe, Georges, you were telling me earlier what the equivalent of 18 kW is in for the
It's about.
lay person like myself.
It's about 36 servers.
It's pretty heavy power consumption, which is why the ESG credentials were so important to us. We also charge for the links, and again, this is very technical, the links between co-located servers and for connecting to the external world. You know, most exciting here as well, we're also charging for roof space. For the most latency sensitive customers, they wish not to access through you know the latest and fastest landlines, the fiber optic networks and so on. They're actually looking at placing microwaves in certain lines across Europe to have the fastest access to the data center.
You know, renting the roof space is also a material source of revenues for us, so they can put their microwaves on top and be fast. Of course, we operate, you know, smart hands in the data center and various add-on services. All of this makes us a relatively high consumer of power. Now I'll hand over to Georges, who will maybe talk about a bit more in detail about the ESG credentials of this data center.
Thank you, Simon. Again, I mean, we spent a lot of time assessing our data center across Europe. The conversation that we had with Aruba was simply quite different in terms of their value offering than what we had from other data centers. To give you a little bit of an idea of how Aruba is looking at its ESG requirement. The Aruba CEO essentially focuses on ESG and its power consumption and matches its power consumption with hydraulic power and power generated by photovoltaic cells. Essentially, every time that Aruba grows its footprint, it aims to buy an equivalent, typically, hydroelectric plant to match its energy demand.
Now, we don't know any other data center that actually does that. This is why we are very proud to be partnering with Aruba, because we really believe that essentially as a result of this move, we are powering the trading of 25% of the European equity with hydro and the sun. That's a very powerful statement for you as investors, as well as for our clients. Because obviously we benefit from our own consumption, but we allow our clients to benefit from exactly the same source of energy, and that's important also to them. If I go to the next page and the timeline.
We started the implementation process in June, where essentially Aruba started the build out of the room that we are in. We then started to install our hardware from the end of June. We are now inviting customers to join us as of this month to install their own hardware. With the intent of clients starting to test this process from January and then delivering a go live on the sixth of June. How well is that going? Well, the answer is that for the moment we are on track. I'm gonna preempt a question because I know it's gonna come. Yeah.
What is the impact of the supply chain on the deliverable of this data center? This is a question that we asked ourselves when we started this program. The supply chain challenges are not new. When we started the program in the month of March, April, we already preempted this discussion, and we're very careful to, on one side, understanding what was our own requirement in terms of hardware. We had active engagement with all of our suppliers to make sure that we had very clear timeline. At the moment, we are actively and sometimes daily call with our suppliers, and we have had no issues in terms of our supply chain in terms of delivering our own data center.
The second question that I'm preempting is, what is the impact on our clients who have exactly the same requirement? The same conversation that we had in April with ourselves, we had with our clients. We literally, at every conversation that we were providing or every communication that we were giving, were reiterating to our clients the need to ensure as quick as possible ordering of the hardware. We track this very closely. It's one of the metrics that we track with our clients to make sure that those clients are actually delivering their hardware to us well in advance of the requirements for overall timeline. At this point in time, we have no client that have informed us of any concern in their own supply chain to deliver this program.
If I go now on to the second part of the conversation, which is the Optiq migration. You've all heard about Optiq. Optiq was delivered 2-3 years ago. It was a very significant investment for Euronext. It is really the epitome, I would say, of how we describe a modern technology platform. It is completely scalable, and we saw that last year when we had the volumes as a result of COVID, and we had almost 10 times increase in volume on some of the days. We had no issue in terms of our latency.
We already provide a certain amount of our infrastructure in terms of full redundancy and full availability of our platform in terms of failures. We implemented a very significant amount of enhancement to deliver change at rapid pace. I would say that as we integrate Borsa, this ability to deliver change with a significant pace is a key component of the success for us to deliver Optiq migration on time. Now, obviously, you know, we are best-in-class latency. We are at 15 microseconds. But it's also, I would say this single liquidity pool and this second technology platform that makes a huge difference. Now, we just finished the implementation of Oslo last November. We did Ireland a couple of years before, and now I will let Simon describe to you what the business impact of those migration were for us and our clients.
Thank you, Georges. As Georges said, we have some. A couple of nice examples of integrating markets onto the Optiq platform in the Euronext family in recent years. Although these small markets are certainly smaller than the Italian market, they give an indication, I think, of the direction of travel. What happens when a market joins the Euronext market is that the members of the joining market virtually automatically have access to all the instruments traded on the rest of the Euronext markets. When Dublin and Oslo members joined the Euronext family, they had vastly facilitated access to all the other markets of Euronext and vice versa. This phenomenon of removing and reducing.
Sorry, removing these frictional costs of trading, of reducing the access costs, for smaller markets really pays dividends. There are a few examples up here where this has been demonstrated. First of all, in both of these cases, the membership of the Oslo Børs went up by almost a quarter, and the membership of the Euronext Dublin was doubled. This is because these, you know, they're smaller markets, but the costs versus the size of the market was often not really worth it for even the large investment banks, trading on these markets, so they went indirectly. There was massive expansion in both cases of memberships. What this meant in many cases was that the liquidity in the order book was enhanced.
Here in the Dublin market, we have some really nice concrete empirical examples of the power of the Single Order Book. Before the migration of the Dublin market to Euronext, you know, the three big Irish blue chips were traded, still are, traded on the LSE in a sterling line and on the Dublin market pre-Euronext in a euro line. The points of price formation for these three big, so it's CRH, Ryanair and Smurfit, the price formation was occurring in London, in sterling, and being mirrored on the Irish market in euros. Now if we look at those statistics, so typically there was 30%, 40% being on Dublin and the 60%, 70% being done on the London Stock Exchange. Those three Irish blue chips joined the Euronext market.
Some of the big electronic liquidity providers and the big U.S. tier one investment banks started to trade directly those Irish blue chips. Today, a couple of years later, we see simply that the liquidity has shifted. This has been very much evidenced by the recent story you will have seen in the press about Ryanair considering, you know, even delisting from the LSE because 75% of the liquidity today takes place on Euronext Dublin. You know, these are very nice examples of where liquidity shifts and the power of the Single Order Book. But above all, we're not gonna disclose any numbers on this, so Aurélie, tell me off if I say anything I shouldn't.
Above all, when we integrate these markets, we can apply the same segmented fee structure or the same discipline in segmenting fees on these markets, where before they tend to have very simple fee structures. To say it resulted in significant revenue uplift for these markets is probably an understatement. We'll see some of that obviously in the Italian market. Very quickly, what does this mean for the Italian market? It's simply the reverse of what I've said, but you know, either on a larger scale. The Italian market, when we're integrating the technology and the functionality, we're really trying to take the best of both worlds.
Georges mentioned earlier this morning about how in the derivatives market, for example, we really see a functional richness in the Italian market from which Euronext can benefit. In terms of membership, we have almost 199 members across the two markets and all asset classes, but it's quite striking that only 25% of those members are cross members. You can see the beginnings of the benefits of the cross-selling of having local retail specialists in Italy connecting directly to the, you know, the retail services we offer on the rest of Euronext to benefit from, you know, the best of book offers and so on.
We have, you know, big electronic liquidity providers sitting in London saying, "I would love to trade more in Italy." Okay, so all that kind of liquidity dynamic will be unlocked once we go through the migration. Now, Georges, I think we'll go through some practical timelines before we have questions.
Thanks a lot, Simon. So in terms of timeline, as you can see here, the dates are a little bit more high level because we are some 18 months, I would say, before a full migration. We spent a lot of time with our Italian colleagues over the past 6 months or 9 months in terms of understanding what were the features that we wanted to keep and retain with the Italian market. The answer is that we will retain the majority of those features, obviously pending regulatory approval, in terms of benefit to the whole Euronext ecosystem. That's, I would say, a really important point for us, which is that the beauty of Euronext is that we don't operate individual markets.
We operate a single liquidity pool, and that means that we have harmonized rules and harmonized features across all of our markets. That is really the strength of the market. Therefore, in our conversation with our Italian colleagues, it was very clear that for us, we want to get the best of both world. We have a mature G7 vibrant ecosystem in Italy. We want to get the best of that. But we equally have a vibrant, successful Euronext existing market, and we still want to retain the best functionality that exists there. We started the process of building the functionalities, and we initially focused, I would say, on some of the prerequisite that, for instance, building regulatory reporting, building connectivity to the clearinghouses.
These are all aspects that we'll have to do in any cases regardless of the features. We'll continue to do that, talking to clients in the coming months in terms of our exact features and obviously again, pending regulatory approval. We expect that we will deliver the first functionality in Q4 of next year, and then the final production go live being in H1 of 2023. We just wanted to highlight that obviously we have a TSA, which is our Transitional Service Agreement, which is that LSE currently provides us the service of the MillenniumIT Exchange. That service agreement will end in October of 2023. With that, we'll open up to questions on both the data center and the Optiq ecosystem.
We got a question from Arnaud Giblat from Exane. Even the larger deal size in trades in Italy are also to do with fees being charged on number of trades rather than value traded.
That's definitely part of the equation. It's a mixture of several things, but we're able to isolate, you know, the flows which are coming from the passive flows coming from the big tier one to multiple, which is from the UK, to be able to back up what I've said. Yes, the fee structure is charging in euros and not value-traded part of the story. Yep.
Hi, it's Martin Price from Jefferies. Just a quick question on your comment that you expect that applying a segmented fee structure to the market in Italy to support uplift in revenue capture. Just to try and square that with a comment earlier that you'd expect revenue capture for the group overall to moderate from current levels. Any thoughts on that would be helpful.
I think from an overall revenue level, you know, we're pretty much reaching the limit in terms of what we can extract in terms of overall the Euronext basis point on cash equities. We've got some strong tailwinds on the yearly yield, especially from the smaller trade sizes across the board over the last couple of years. We'll be making some pricing adjustments next year, especially for the big Tier 1 investment banks. What we see in the Italian market is that there is not a. You know, if you look at the Euronext fee grid, which I'm sure you have, sometimes, I accept, from an external perspective, it can look very strange.
You see lots of boxes, but behind each of those boxes is a customer discussion. There is a discussion with a particular segment of customers, where each time we try and optimize the price-volume elasticity with that group of customers. Simply put, those types of techniques today are not applied to the Borsa Italiana fee grid. You can see yourself it's a very simple, classic sliding scale. No differentiation for electronic liquidity providers, retail flow, proprietary trading flow, none of the indirect proprietary trading flow schemes we have.
I could go on and on, but I can't go into details, but if you look at the richness of the flow coming through the Italian market, you know, we've looked at the numbers, and we think without getting into trouble with Aurélie, that there's some interesting work to be done on that market.
Great. Thank you. Maybe just to follow up on sort of structural changes you're seeing in the market as more flow skews towards the closing auction. Do you see a sort of tailwind there as that trend continues, and do you expect-
Yeah.
to monetize that?
It really has probably flattened off over the last year or so. I think we went through this phase where closing auctions on Euronext were typically at 20-25%, and now they're, you know, over 30% of the overall volumes of the trading day. That's really flattened off over the last couple of years and especially since COVID-19. As you know, this is all driven by the rise in passive management, the redemptions and creations of ETFs at the close, and so on. Also because the buy side, a lot of them told us we see the continuous trading session as quite a confusing space to navigate these days with all the options proposed by the brokers.
Really, the value of the closing auction, the efficiency, the beauty of the closing auction as a price formation point is crazy. Within five minutes, you have an accumulation period, or three minutes on some markets, and then there's an uncross, and boom. On average, the average trade size is 10 times the continuous session. So yeah, you're talking 150,000 to execute in one go. So that has been slowly more and more appreciated by the buy-side. We look at this very carefully. We are very much aware, as you can imagine, of the attention this has attracted. Our competitors naturally are getting very interested in this space.
We take this very seriously, but this is a really serious, seriously difficult nut to crack, this point of single price formation. The issuers don't want it, the buy side don't want it. Where we see, you know, some innovation occurring, it's really at the margins. Turquoise recently launched their Trade At Last functionality. We offer that already. It's really difficult to try and differentiate in this space. Every single one of those competing initiatives relies on importing the price formation, the prices from the primary market into some kind of crossing mechanism within the alternative offer. We're not complacent one bit, and we are...
Without going into details, there are certain things up our sleeves we can do if ever the threat got more serious. But today it's a pretty, you know, as you can imagine, a beneficial business to be in as a market operator.
That's great. Thank you.
I got a follow-up from Arnaud Giblat. You seem to imply that pricing model will align in Italy, this which would be a fee hike for clients. Have you had feedback from your clients on this?
Can you repeat the question? Sorry.
You seem to imply that the pricing model will align in Italy, which would be a fee hike for your clients. Have you had feedback from them on that?
All this will be done post-migration in 2024. We are very committed, as I said earlier, to maintain the diversity of the Italian order book, and we will do whatever it takes to maintain that diversity of the Italian order book and the quality in terms of order execution, it gives to its customers.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yep. We can go. Thank you for your patience.