The talk of the town in New York was again of exchange consolidation as over the two days of FOW's conference news broke of potential mergers involving pan-European equity and derivatives market Euronext, centring on a likely tie-up with New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The real issue, though, as panellists pointed out during a number of industry seminars, was that the immense valuations among publicly traded derivatives exchanges have brought them on to the M&A radar as potential predators to an unprecedented extent. To illustrate this, Trading Technologies' EVP global sales, Tim Geannopulos, put Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)'s value into context.
"CME's market capitalisation is a combination of NYSE and Nasdaq," he said. "This is counter-intuitive in a world where we always thought the cash equities exchanges ruled the roost - it's not that way right now."
Ken Raisler, head of commodities, futures and derivatives group at law firm...