Euronext extends the mandate of Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Boujnah until 2027

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Stéphane Boujnah has been reappointed as head of Euronext for a further four years, with the former mergers and acquisitions banker promising further deals to bolster his position as Europe’s largest exchange operator.

Boujnah, 59, will stay at Euronext through 2027, extending an eight-year term.

His new tenure from the board was confirmed on Wednesday, making him the longest-serving head of the major stock exchange in Europe. The heads of the London Stock Exchange Group, the Deutsche Börse and the Swiss stock exchange joined their respective companies in 2018.

Boujnah, a former Santander and Deutsche Bank executive, joined Euronext in 2015 shortly after it was spun off from Intercontinental Exchange. He has transformed the company’s size conquering European rivalsincluding the Dublin and Oslo stock exchanges and the acquisition of Borsa Italiana for €4.4 billion.

“To increase the growth of the group we will work on organic projects but we will also make acquisitions. When there are options to consolidate trade in Europe. . . we will,” Boujnah told the Financial Times earlier this week.

Boujnah said he remained open to acquisition opportunities “in post-trading, fund distribution, data, forex, power,” but declined to name specific companies.

Euronext’s rival Deutsche Börse agreed in April to buy Danish investment management firm SimCorp, valuing it at €3.9 billion, underlining that European stock traders see fund services as a new avenue for growth.

Earlier this year, Euronext launched but later withdrawn an offer for the Spanish fund distribution company Allfunds.

“We decided not to proceed with this acquisition as we did not like the outcome of our due diligence, but clearly this is an area in which Deutsche Börse has invested significant resources,” Boujnah said. “This is a sector adjacent to our core business”.

Autonomous Research analyst Ian White said the exchange needed to strike a deal this year to convince the market of its growth. “Euronext’s shares have fared poorly against its peers over the past 15-16 months then [Boujnah] will look for a way to stimulate growth. It’s really hard to see it coming from somewhere else,” she added.

Boujnah’s reappointment will make him an influential figure in European decision-making in the coming years as Brussels seeks to strengthen and unify its capital markets to make it more attractive to international investors.

Euronext’s main stock exchanges are in Amsterdam and Paris, which have threatened the London Stock Exchange’s position as the preferred listing venue for European companies in recent years.

EU officials are considering a series of measures to improve the region’s fragmented capital markets, including creating a real-time databases of information on trading stocks and bonds and simplifying the process for companies going public.

But Boujnah called on Brussels to improve its oversight of European capital markets to provide a more comprehensive view of the bloc’s financial services.

He added that officials should view capital markets holistically and include all sectors, from asset managers to stock exchanges, not just banks.

“We need to have an oversight that considers and encompasses the vision of Europe as a continent of financial originators, and not just users and consumers, just like a search engine,” Boujnah said.

The company said on Tuesday that it will further diversify this year by launching a so-called dark pool, in which investors can trade large blocks of stock without revealing their moves to the market. Most of the off-exchange venues are run by brokers and large investment banks.

Euronext reported first-quarter revenue of €372 million on Tuesday, down 6% on the same period last year.