Listing a Company in the Stock Exchange in Germany

The Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany

The Frankfurt Stock Exchange is among the largest stock exchanges in the world and accounts for over 90% of the revenue of all stock exchanges in Germany, but it also has a large quota of the European market. The Stock Exchange in Frankfurt is home to more than 250 international trading companies. The Frankfurt Stock Exchange has its own electronic trading platform called Xetra which is used for electronic trading by all foreign and German companies listed on it. One of the major benefits of the German Stock Exchange is that all shares are free trading, no restrictions being imposed.

The segments of the German Stock Exchange

The Frankfurt Stock Exchange has 4 tiers called segments. These are:

– the Quotation Board, for dual listings;
– the Scale segment for SMEs (which replaced the Entry Standard for shares in 2017),
– the General Standard segment,
– the Prime Standard segment.

While the Quotation Board and the Scale segment belong to the Open Market (Freiverkehr), which is not an EU regulated market, the General Standard and the Prime Standard segments belong to the EU Regulated Market. The Scale segment has lighter reporting requirements than the regulated market, while the Prime Standard segment has the most rigorous ones. Some smaller companies first list on the Scale segment until they qualify for the General or Prime Standard segment.

You can contact our German lawyers for details about listing requirements on all Stock Exchange segments.

Requirements for General Standard segment listing on the German Stock Exchange

In order to list a company on the German Stock Exchange, there are few requirements that must be met for the issuer to be listed on the General Standard segment. These requirements are:

– there is no longer a minimum period of existence for the issuer (the former 3-year requirement has been repealed),
– the expected market value of the shares must be at least 1 million euros,
– the company must have at least 30 shareholders,
– if the market value cannot be estimated, the company's equity must be at least 1 million euros,
– the minimum free float is 10%,
– the nominal issuing volume must be of at least 10,000 shares,
– the company must submit an EU prospectus underwritten by a German bank,
– the prospectus must generally contain audited financial information for the last 3 financial years (or the shorter period the company has existed).

Listing regulations are subject to other requirements, which is why it is best to ask for the advice of our law firm in Germany. The time period for a company to be listed on the Stock Exchange in Germany ranges between 28 and 32 weeks.