Legal and Economic Aspects of Stock Exchanges’ Consolidations

Abstract

In the last months we have watched the creation of the first transatlantic stock exchange, which was established when the New York Stock Exchange merged with Euronext grouping the markets in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon and the derivatives market in London. Few weeks later the new established NYSE Euronext signed a strategic alliance with the Tokyo Stock Exchange and prepared the back-ground for a worldwide stock exchange, which will be able to trade stocks, derivatives, currencies and commodities 24 hours a day. But it shows also, that there will be still place for local financial markets and the best way of acting is not acquiring the competitors in hostile takeovers, but as partners building up flexible global networks. It is a compromise between chauvinism and scale economies, where users gain greater choice and flexibility as well as shared technology, without offending national regulation and political resistance to foreign ownership.