BFM Business, the reference media outlet for the economy. BFM Business, first on the stock market. BFM Business presents the great interview with Guillaume Paul. It is 6:32 PM on BFM Business. Our first guest tonight in the great interview is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Managing Board of Euronext, Stéphane Boujnah. Good evening, Mr. Boujnah. Thank you very much for being with us on BFM Business. Euronext made many announcements today. They were planned, you had spoken about them in March.
Yes. During the group's annual conference, measures, I'll say it quickly, to help France and Europe meet the challenges of our time. You speak of a set of measures that will allow companies to contribute to the continent's strategic autonomy. This concerns defense, security, and energy. We will detail all of that. I will note that last March, you illustrated your point by quoting the Greek historian Thucydides who said in his time, so that was a few centuries before our era, it is in the nature of man to oppress those who yield and to respect those who resist. In other words, it's fight or die, you have to choose. Would you say that the time for awakening has come in Europe, finally?
Yes, well, it's an observation that everyone makes, that Ursula von der Leyen has structured, that the President of the Republic regularly reminds us of, and each of us observes that on one side we have a Russian threat stronger than ever since 2022, and Vladimir Putin who wants us to be weak and divided, and on the other side something new, undefined, unrecognizable, which is an attitude from the United States that also wants us to be weaker and more divided than we have been in the past. So there are no other solutions, and it's a truism to say it today, but to structure, to mobilize collectively to organize Europe's strategic autonomy, to rearm, because if we want to maintain our way of life, if we want to remain free, we must be feared. If we want to be feared, we must be powerful. If we want to be powerful, we must equip ourselves. If we want to equip ourselves, we must pay. And so, we must find money for all of this. We must find equity. We must find debt. And it is the job of a stock exchange to facilitate the circulation of equity and the business of debt.
You say it's the job of a stock exchange, but are you doing this also because you consider, perhaps, and this is a very personal question, that there isn't a sufficiently mature political project today to advance all these things?
I think that like all European construction subjects, it requires a mobilization of political leaders, a mobilization of public institutions, and then also a bottom-up mobilization of private actors. A few weeks ago, we announced that we were launching a common prospectus for listing across Europe, a bottom-up initiative, as they say in English, that starts from the bottom. And there are many things that companies can do themselves to accelerate European integration. You know, in the derivatives market, there are XDA contracts that have been made by private actors. There are many things that create fluidity and efficiency, and we consider that our role as a corporate citizen is to organize things. Especially since it's not artificial, it's not a fair that we are organizing, it's that there is demand from investors who want to have tools that allow them to invest in security and defense companies that will participate in Europe's rearmament.
Yes, we have both ends of the issue, meaning on one hand investors around the world who want to support and participate in the growth of these companies, and on the other hand companies that need equity, that need debt to increase their capacity. So, let's detail these announcements you made today. First, in defense, you say 'We are going to launch in the third quarter of this year a solution you have named IPO Ready Defense', precisely to facilitate the listing of defense companies. What are you going to offer them concretely?
Yes, let me take a step back. It's one of the three initiatives we are launching because the defense sector in Europe is characterized by several quite unusual things. First, there are very few listed companies, and they are very important, very large, and there are many unlisted companies, they are very numerous, they are medium-sized. In France, we estimate that there are between 4,000 and 5,000 medium-sized companies in the defense sector whose equity is deficient today.
And so there are initiatives being taken at the national level with great efficiency, notably by the BPI in France, which is very active in this area. But what we are going to try to do is things at the European level because many of these companies are very isolated in a head-to-head relationship with their national clients. You know, the Polish Prime Minister said a few weeks ago, it is still strange that 450 million Europeans call for the help of 330 million Americans to defend themselves against 140 million Russians. It's an extremely catchy punchline, except that there is only one chain of command for 140 million Russians, one chain of command for 330 million Americans, and there is a fragmentation of command for 450 million Europeans. And so what is important is that European companies, which are very fragmented, have opportunities to come together to consider modes of consolidation and merger, because there will be no creation of a European defense industry without a deep movement of consolidation between, of course, certain large players, but above all, especially the medium-sized companies.
So, IPO Ready is a system that already exists, which helps companies prepare for an IPO. What we want to do is not necessarily prepare or propose to defense companies in Europe to go for an IPO, but to make the path towards growth. Because what is going for an IPO? It's reforming your governance to make it more effective, reforming your communication with investors, clarifying your strategy, structuring your balance sheet in a much more powerful and effective way. And so, in a way, preparing the transformation of the company, whether these companies go for a listing or not is a secondary objective. What is important is that they transform, and that they transform in contact with other European companies. And that is a framework that already exists, called IPO Ready.
Yes. Other similar ones, projects to organize the equity financing of companies. The funding days, we will have them at the European level on July 7th and 8th. And then a system we call Defence Growth Hub, which is a system that was set up in Italy by Leonardo, a large aerospace group, and its subcontractors, to organize greater fluidity, greater efficiency of the entire value chain. We are going to organize the same dynamic at the European scale. So that is really very important because it seems important to us, of course, to mobilize all our tools for accelerating the growth of private companies in the defense sector, and above all, to do it at the European scale. It's a program that has benefited from funding from the European Union.
That you are going to draw from, let's put it that way, the 800 billion euros in loans announced by some?
We have a cooperation with the European Investment Bank in a way that is not structural, but which allows us to accelerate the diffusion of our programs. I wanted to ask you if there isn't a catch, because you know that these are information that circulated about two months ago with our colleagues at La Tribune, according to which the CAC ESG that you created in 2021 was considering removing defense stocks.
