Role and Function of Stock Markets

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 60%, University of Westminster (Westminster Business School), course: MSc Finance and Accounting, language: English, abstract: Nowadays it could be assumed that the level of globalisation in the financial sector is very high with participants acting global. The financial markets especially the stock markets allow companies to raise funds by letting the public all around the world to participate. On the other hand investors have the possibility to take part in global- or regional-acting corporations and consequently increase their economical wealth. This work will discuss the role of stock markets as part of the financial system. For that purpose it will analyse the organisation of stock markets including structure, participants, efficiency and regulatory framework with concentrating on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). Last but not least it is comparing two main stock markets in Europe, the LSE which is the main stock market for the UK and the FSE which is the main stock market for Germany, by giving some historical and structural data.