FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The world's largest travel group Tui successfully returned to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Monday with its main listing. The shares recently rose by 3.7 percent to 7.88 euros. After almost ten years in London, Tui hopes that its comeback in Frankfurt will lead to a rapid entry into the MDax. Tui expects to be included in the mid-cap index as early as June 24.

The share will also be listed in London until June, when trading there will be discontinued. The Group expects to save costs by concentrating on Frankfurt, and hopes that inclusion in the MDax will lead to higher demand for the share and thus higher prices. The move should also help the Group to secure the conditions for air traffic rights in the EU in the future.

The Tui Group had moved the main listing of its share to London in 2014 in the course of the merger with its former subsidiary Tui Travel. As a result, the Group was also removed from the MDax, to which it had previously belonged. However, the share did not disappear completely from Germany afterwards. It continued to be traded in Hanover and also in Frankfurt, but only as a secondary listing in the largely unregulated OTC market. Now it is returning to the regulated Prime Standard, which is a prerequisite for inclusion in the MDax. In return, Tui will leave the British FTSE 250 index.

Tui had already announced at the end of 2023 that it was considering withdrawing from the London Stock Exchange. In contrast to a few years ago, more than three quarters of shares are now traded in Germany again, it said. Only 22 percent of share trading still took place in London in 2023. At the Annual General Meeting in February, the shareholders then gave the green light for the plans with 98.35 percent of the votes cast.

Meanwhile, Tui is still struggling with its debt burden from the coronavirus crisis. The slump in business as a result of the pandemic plunged Tui into an existential crisis, and the German government rescued the Group with billions in aid. At the end of December, net debt stood at just under 4 billion euros, around 1.3 billion euros lower than a year earlier. This was mainly due to the money from a capital increase a year ago, which had significantly depressed the share price. At that time, the shares were also traded ex subscription rights and were subject to significant fluctuations.

Recently, there has been a noticeable upward trend. Thanks to strong demand for vacations, the travel group is back on course for pre-pandemic business./niw/ajx/nas