EASDAQ: The Pan-European Stock Market for Growth Companies

The European Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation, or EASDAQ, was officially launched on September 30, 1996. It is a pan-European screen-based stock market inspired by the European Commission’s concern that smaller European companies seeking long-term equity capital were handicapped by the absence of a suitable European capital market. NASDAQ was seen as an ideal model because it allows companies otherwise ineligible for a listing on the primary markets — largely because they are not yet sufficiently mature — to raise capital. Indeed, the Commission noted in 1995 that 20 percent of NASDAQ initial public offerings were high-technology-related compared to only 10 percent on Europe’s six main national stock exchanges. More importantly, at a time of high unemployment in Europe, the Commission referred to a study showing that although firms listed on NASDAQ accounted for only 0.04 percent of all U.S. companies, they created 16 percent of all new jobs from 1990 through 1994.

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