The history of shares and the stock market
The very first share represented a 12.5% share in the Swedish copper mine "Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags Aktiebalog" in 1288. You can see it in the picture below.
In 1599 the founders of the British East India Company raised £30133 to create a capital fund, which consisted of 101 shares of their own company. This was followed in 1603 by the United East India Company, a Dutch company consisting of six chambers, which was the first company to issue shares to non-corporate shareholders. The then Queen of Scotland Maria van Egmont also traded in this stock.
The birth of the first stock exchange happened in Amsterdam. In 1612, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange came into being, thus enabling permanent stock trading in the 17th century, which was carried out by stockbrokers representing buyers and sellers.
The first German joint-stock company was the "Handels-Compagnie auf denen Küsten von Guinea" (Trading Company on the Coasts of Guinea), founded in 1682, but the first German share, that of the "Emdener Heringsfang-Company" (Emden Herring Catching Company), did not appear on the quotation list of the Berlin Stock Exchange, founded on June 5, 1739, until 1785. The rapid market development led to further stock exchange openings:
- Hamburg Stock Exchange in 1815
- Munich Stock Exchange 1830
- Stuttgart Stock Exchange 1861
- Frankfurt Stock Exchange 1871
- Düsseldorf Stock Exchange 1875
Between 1871 and 1873, 928 stock corporations with a total capital of 2.78 billion marks were established in Germany.
Stock exchange trading was suspended in the wake of the German banking crisis and the closure of the stock exchanges in 1931. After World War II, the Hamburg Stock Exchange began "controlled over-the-counter trading" on July 9, 1945, and official trading in shares resumed in 1952. At the time of the economic miracle, shares of Daimler, BASF or Bayer were also established. In the 1990s, the stock market boom generated great interest in shares, and the Telekom share, which was touted as the so-called "people's share," found its way onto the stock market on November 18, 1996, in the course of a first capital increase with an issue price of DM 28.50. The first IPO of the Telekom share was held on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In this first IPO, Telekom raised approximately DM 20 billion; in the second IPO, in 1999, they raised EUR 10.8 billion; and in the third and final IPO, they raised EUR 13 billion. These three IPOs still top the list of Germany's largest IPOs by a wide margin. From its all-time high of €103 in March 2000, the stock fell to a low of €8.16 in less than two years. The crash of the so-called "people's share" caused many dissatisfied, if not devastated, shareholders and left its mark on German stock culture.
Sources:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktie
https://www.ing.de/wissen/die-geschichte-der-aktie/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Stora_Kopparberg_1288.jpg
https://www.myheritage.de/names/maria_van%20egmont
http://www.hamburger-boerse.de/de/wertpapierb%C3%B6rse.html
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Aktie
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion%C3%A4rsquote
