The story
The Paris stock market started taking shape in the early 18th century, and first acquired prominence with trading of John Law's Company from 1717 to 1721. In 1724, a government decree gave it its first permanent regulation and is occasionally though dubiously taken as the market's starting point.
On 5 March 1886, anarchist Charles Gallo targeted it during the Paris Stock Exchange bombing, a propaganda of the deed attack. He entered the building, threw a bomb that failed to explode, and then began shooting at the traders who were selling government bonds.
From the second half of the 19th century, official stock markets in Paris were operated by the Compagnie des agents de change, directed by the elected members of a stockbrokers' syndical council. The number of dealers in each of the different trading areas of the Bourse was limited. There were around 60 agents de change (the official stockbrokers). An agent de change had to be a French citizen, be nominated by a former agent or his estate, and be approved by the Minister of Finance, and he was appointed by decree of the President of the Republic. Officially, the agents de change could not trade for their own account nor even be a counterpart to someone who wanted to buy or sell securities with their aid; they were strictly brokers, that is, intermediaries. In the financial literature, the Paris Bourse is hence referred to as order-driven market, as opposed to quote-driven markets or dealer markets, where price-setting is handled by a dealer or market-maker. In Paris, only agents de change could receive a commission, at a rate fixed by law, for acting as an intermediary. However, parallel arrangements were usual in order to favor some clients' quote. The Commodities Exchange was housed in the same building until 1889, when it moved to the present Bourse de commerce.
Moreover, until about the middle of the 20th century, a parallel market known as "La Coulisse" was in operation.
Until the late 1980s, the market operated as an open outcry exchange, with the agents de change meeting on the exchange floor of the Palais Brongniart. In 1986, the Paris Bourse started to implement an electronic trading system. This was known generically as CATS (Computer Assisted Trading System), but the Paris version was called CAC (Cotation Assistée en Continu). By 1989, quotations were fully automated. The Palais Brongniart hosted the French financial derivatives exchanges MATIF and MONEP, until they were fully automated in 1998.
In 1988, new legislation was adopted that radically reformed the governance of the Paris stock exchange. Its ownership was transferred to the former Compagnie des agents de change ("brokers' society"), which, on the occasion renamed itself as the Société des Bourses Françaises (SBF, "French Stock Exchange Company"). In 1999, the SBF absorbed what remained of MATIF and MONEP and altered its name to Paris Bourse-SBF. The next year, SBF was a leading participant of the merger that formed Euronext.
Past locations
The Paris securities markets first emerged in rue Quincampoix, a small street near les Halles in Paris, in the early 18th century. It remained on rue Quincampoix until closed by government decision on 22 March 1720, at a time when most of its activity was focused on trading the shares and other securities of John Law's Company. The turmoil of that year and gradual unraveling of Law's system was accompanied by several relocations of the market, first to the place Vendôme then to the garden of the Hôtel de Soissons near les Halles. It eventually relocated in October 1720 in the rear garden of Hôtel Tubeuf, which by that time was part of the headquarters complex of Law's Company that also included the Hôtel de Nevers. The market remained on that location until 27 June 1793 when it suspended operations in the chaotic context of the French Revolution. The building later became part of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which had first been located in the Hôtel de Nevers in the 1720s.
The market reopened on 10 May 1795 in the Louvre Palace, in Anne of Austria's former summer apartment on the ground floor of the Petite Galerie, and stayed there until 9 September 1795. In September 1795, the Bourse again closed for a few months; it reopened in January 1796 in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, then in October 1807, moved to the Palais-Royal, and finally, in March 1818, to the former Couvent des Filles-Saint-Thomas.
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By then, a permanent home for the stock exchange was under construction on an adjacent site, soon known as the Palais Brongniart for its architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart who died before the building was completed. Brongniart had submitted his project, which was a rectangular neoclassical Roman temple with a giant Corinthian colonnade enclosing a vaulted and arcaded central chamber. His designs were endorsed by Napoleon and won Brongniart that major public commission at the end of his career. After his death in 1813, the building was completed by Éloi Labarre from 1813 to 1826. On 6 November 1826, the stock exchange finally moved into the Palais Brongniart, which was and remains owned by the City of Paris. From 1901 to 1905, Jean-Baptiste-Frederic Cavel designed the addition of two lateral wings, resulting in a cruciform plan with innumerable columns. According to the architectural historian Andrew Ayers, these alterations "did nothing to improve the reputation of this uninspiring monument." After Euronext stopped using the building, it was repurposed by the City of Paris as an events venue.
Following the 1988 reform, the Compagnie des agents de change, renamed SBF, left its iconic art deco seat at 4, place de la Bourse to move to the former Paris office of Société Centrale des Banques de Province then Chase Manhattan Bank at 39, rue Cambon. That building remained the seat of SBF, then Euronext Paris until the latter moved to La Défense in 2015. The building on rue Cambon was subsequently restructured to house offices of Chanel.
From Wikipedia’s article on Euronext Paris, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4