The legal, regulatory and operational framework of the official Barcelona Stock Exchange (1940-1989) and full stop.

Abstract

This paper aims, briefly, to expose, the evolution of the organizational and functional structure of the Barcelona Stock Exchange in its third historical stage, which runs between 1940 and 1989, thus culminating the long period in which the Spanish stock exchanges had their own identity and effective legal capacity. It follows, then, to the two previous stages. The first stage began in 1830, recently approved the first Commercial Code. It starts a Free Market, that means, a market driven by its customary rules outside the official legislation that sanctioned the Law of 1831. It concludes with the closure in 1914 due to the serious situation of insolvency caused by the outbreak of the First World War. The second stage takes place between 1915 and 1936, namely, from the reopening once the European war conflagration has ended until the beginning of the Civil War. This stage highlighted as its own unique feature the existence of a Dual Market, since with the reopening the Official Stock Exchange is decreed in Barcelona that coexists with the secular market sponsored by the Free Market Association. With this background, this third stage typifies a single and Official Market, being the stock exchanges public law corporation. This stage concludes with the Securities Market Reform Act of 1988. A loss of identity and gradually also of legal personality begins, to the extent that, first, the Barcelona Stock Exchange becomes part of the Interconnected Market, then to be integrated into the “Holding Bolsas y Mercados Españoles” (BME) and, finally, at listing with the subsequent takeover bid presented by SIX, consequently the Spanish stock exchange becomes currently a company of the Swiss stock exchange.