Vincent Van Dessel vacated his office in the venerable Brussels Stock Exchange back in 2015.

The magnificent Neo-Renaissance building, which opened in 1873 and still shapes the face of Brussels city center to this day, has become too big for the business, the head of Euronext Brussels reports in an interview with the FAZ The company, part of the Euronext group based in Amsterdam, resides today in an unadorned purpose-built building near Brussels Central Station.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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"Good transport connections for my employees are always more important than a representative but impractical magnificent building," says Van Dessel.

It's the same in Brussels as in so many stock exchanges: the trading floor hardly plays a role anymore, the business is processed on the computer and no representative buildings are needed for this.

In addition, the trading volume in Brussels is just 10 percent of the Paris Stock Exchange, the largest trading center in the Euronext Group, which comprises a total of seven stock exchanges.

Long search for new use

Since Euronext Brussels moved out, it has taken a while to find a new use for the lavish stock exchange building.

However, it is gradually becoming apparent how the "repurposed" stock exchange could become the centerpiece of the urban planning upgrading of an entire district.

After the Boulevard Anspach, which runs past the building, was declared a pedestrian zone in a very rustic way, the pedestrians now feel comfortable there.

The former stock exchange is intended to extend this zone and house a shopping gallery in the future.

This should not be inferior to the Brussels Galeries Saint-Hubert in terms of splendor and form a new axis to the Grand-Place with its closed baroque façade front.

More than 100 breweries and 1300 types of beer

On the top two floors of the building – is something else conceivable in Belgium?

– the “Belgian Beer World” got its place.

More than 100 breweries want to move into this mixture of museum and bar and offer more than 1300 beers for sale.

The "Beer World" was originally supposed to open in 2018.

Now the city of Brussels assures that nothing stands in the way of an inauguration in spring 2023.

The museum aims to reflect the diversity of the Belgian beer market, which knows abbey and trappist beers, fruit, brown and many other beers.

Given the country's beer culture, it is no wonder that the world's largest beer company AB Inbev from Leuven is the heavyweight in Brussels' leading index Bel-20 with a share of around 12 percent.

On the other hand, AB Inbev hardly reflects the diversity of the Belgian market, but is above all a global supplier (and probably the only Belgian global group).

The only originally Belgian of AB Inbev's global brands, Stella Artois, has been added over time.

It joins Budweiser, Corona, Beck's, Diebels, Hasseröder, Spaten-Löwenbräu and others.

AB Inbev is among the five Bel-20 listed companies to have appreciated in value year-on-year, up nearly 8 percent.

Overall, the index has lost 11.4 percent for a year, which is more than the Dax (8.3 percent).

Most recently, since the low in mid-October at a good 3300 points, the Bel-20 made up ground again and was almost 3700 points on Monday afternoon.

The strong weight of the beer group is not the only special feature of the Brussels leading index, as Van Dessel explains.

Individual sectors are disproportionately represented, which explains the comparatively poor balance sheet this year.

The real estate industry, for example, is strongly represented, and the good years are clearly over.

Poor real estate stock performance

The Antwerp real estate developer VGP, which was only included in the Bel-20 in March, has fallen by 66 percent within a year.

Aedifica (minus 35 percent), Cofinimmo (minus 41 percent) and WDP (minus 34 percent) also lost above average.

If you believe the overview page guruwatch.nl, which summarizes analyst recommendations, there is still considerable potential in the Brussels market in the new year.

For the Antwerp-based biotech group Argenx, which already led the Bel-20 with a plus of almost 33 percent year-on-year, the analysts are calling for a price target of 22 percent.

Those values ​​that have slumped in the past year, such as Aedifica and Cofinimmo, but also the steel manufacturer Aperam, the telecom group Proximus and last but not least the pharmaceutical companies UCB and Galapagos could gain even more.

The outlook for AB Inbev is also positive.

guruwatch.nl only registered buy recommendations for the beer company's paper.