The number of publicly listed companies continue to decline in many countries around the world. In earlier posts, I have discussed about the fall in public companies in the US and UK. The number of public companies listed continues to fall in Germany also as show in the chart below:
Click to enlarge
Source: The Global Economy
According to latest exchange data, the total number of companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is just 467. Go to The Complete List of Listed Companies in Germany page to review all these firms. Listings peaked recently in 2007 at over 750 firms. Since then it has followed a downward trend to reach under 500 today.
This situation with German stocks is particularly noteworthy because Germany is the largest economy in Europe and is an export powerhouse. However most of the German firms are small to medium-sized firms that are in private hands. Many of these firms do not care to go public due to all the stress public companies have to face. In addition many Germans do not care about equity markets as the participation rate in equity investing is very low relative to other developed countries. All these factors tend to weigh in on public listings.
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