No. 190: Brexit and European Corporate Bond Markets

This paper examines how Brexit affected the European corporate bond market. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we compare bond listing activity on trading venues in the EEA30 and the UK before and after Brexit, exploiting the UK’s withdrawal from the EU single market. We use a new European Bond Market Database to analyze the period from 2018 to 2025. We document a substantial and persistent reallocation of bond listings towards the EEA30. Compared to the UK, bond listings in the EEA30 increased by 59% after Brexit, with the shift in listings occurring gradually and continuing beyond the end of the transition period. This corresponds to an increase in the EEA30 market share from approximately one-third prior to Brexit to around 60% following the UK’s final withdrawal. This reallocation is concentrated in multilateral trading facilities and is particularly pronounced for non-European issuers, which is consistent with the loss of passporting rights and changes in regulatory market access. At the issuer level, we observe a significant increase in the likelihood of firms choosing EEA30 venues over UK venues after Brexit, indicating a change in the relative attractiveness of the EEA30 markets. Overall, our findings suggest that Brexit triggered a structural reallocation of European bond listing activity, strengthening the relative position of EEA30 markets.