A surge in stock-market activity in Greece more than offset rising costs at Euronext Athens Holding in the first half of 2026, helping the operator of the Athens exchange post sharp increases in revenue and profit.
The results underline the revival in trading activity in the Greek equity market,but they also reveal rising costs in parts of the business, particularly employee-related expenses and spending on outside advisers.
Personnel expenses rose to €9.42 million in the first six months of the year from €8.82 million in the same period of 2025, an increase of about 6.8%, even as the group's headcount fell to 235 employees from 248.
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The increase was driven largely by severance payments and variable compensation. Severance costs climbed to €375,000 from just €19,000 a year earlier, while variable compensation rose to €478,000 from €62,000. Other employee benefits increased to €808,000 from €737,000. Base compensation, by contrast, declined to €6.69 million from €6.95 million. Spending on outside advisers also increased. Consulting fees rose about 55% to €447,000 from €288,000, while the group's other operating expenses increased 17.8%. Those cost increases were dwarfed by the acceleration in trading on the Athens market.
The total value of transactions jumped 70.7% to €40.8 billion in the first half, while average daily trading value rose 73.3% to €342.6 million. The increase in activity translated quickly into the exchange operator's financial results. Revenue climbed 56.7% to €53.3 million, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, nearly doubled to €34.9 million from €18.1 million. Net profit rose 100.6% to €27 million.
Reorganizing its corporate structure
The figures illustrate how strongly the economics of an exchange operator can respond to higher market activity: much of the additional trading revenue flowed through to earnings despite increases in personnel, consulting and other operating costs. Euronext Athens Holding is also reorganizing its corporate structure, moving the operation and management of Greece's equity and derivatives markets into a separate wholly owned subsidiary.
The business that serves as the market operator- including the regulated securities and derivatives markets as well as the multilateral trading facility- will be transferred to Euronext Athens Single Member S.A., a company wholly owned by Euronext Athens Holding. The related assets, contracts, technology systems and employees will move with the business.
The restructuring is intended to separate the regulated market-operator activities from those of the holding company and bring the Greek operation closer to the corporate structure used across the broader Euronext group, the pan-European exchange operator. Under the new arrangement, the market operator will function as a separate regulated entity. That should simplify supervision by Greece's Hellenic Capital Market Commission and facilitate the integration of the Athens market into Euronext's wider operations. The carve-out isn't expected to affect the group's consolidated financial results because the business and its economics will remain within the same corporate group.
The process began with a decision by Euronext Athens's board on July 1. On July 29, the board approved the plan for the carve-out and transfer of the market-operator business to the subsidiary. There is one regulatory step still to come: the new entity will have to obtain a fresh authorization from the Hellenic Capital Market Commission before it can operate as Greece's market operator.
