Interview: David Hardy, ceo LCH Clearnet

The big story of the last year, or three years if you like, has been the merger. The obvious question is why: did it take so long?

It was complicated, it had never been done before, and there were a number of interested parties. There were all the stresses and strains of a negotiation, of trying to fit together two organisations. Their owner bases were different, so each of them had different objectives and different desires coming out of the merger itself, and blending those all together in an environment that was still going to work in our respective legal and regulatory environments was always likely to be difficult. At the heart of it though are two organisations which basically carry out the same role. It's comforting that a lot of the work that's been undertaken in the merged group over the past few months has revealed significant consistency in...