Sharp rise in the participation of households in the Spanish Stock Market

BME 2012 Report on share ownership structure in Spain

• Non-resident investors remain the main owners of Spanish listed shares, at 39.2% of the market value
• Households are again the second most relevant share owners, a position they had lost to non-financial firms in 2004
• For the first time in 20 years shares beat investment funds as the preferred savings instrument of Spanish families

At the end of 2012 a fourth of the shares listed on the Spanish stock exchange were owned by Spanish households, according to the 2012 Report on share ownership structure in Spain, which the Research Department of BME publishes every year.

The figure is highly relevant as it is four points above last year’s and the highest recorded since practically the last decade, representing over €100bn.

This level of participation of households, at 25.1% of the total value of shares, is the highest since 2004, marking listed shares as one of the most important savings instruments among households, even beating investment funds, which for almost 20 years had been a more popular investment asset in Spain.

Non-resident investors are still the main owners of shares in listed Spanish companies, at  39.2% of their market value, only 9 tenths below their record high.

Around 9,000 investment and pension funds hold stakes worth €72bn in companies that belong to the IBEX 35® index. Worthy of note among these collective investment institutions are the US funds, whose value exceeds €20.7bn, five times as much as their Spanish counterparts.

Non-financial firms are the third most relevant group, at 21.7% of the market value, owning Spanish shares. The two-point decrease in the participation of banks and savings banks, to 5.2%, and the increase in the presence of Public Administrations, to 0.5%, reflect the impact of factors associated with the financial crisis as well as the restructuring of the Spanish financial sector.

With data for the year 2012, it is likely that the participation of retail investors in the Spanish stock exchange will continue being much higher than the European average. According to the Federation of European Stock Exchanges´ (FESE) latest report on share ownership in Europe, with data for 2007, the participation of retail investors in the Spanish stock exchange represented 20.1% of the total market value, 6 points above the European average, at 14%.