Well, who would have thought it? The long-held rivalry between Chicago's futures exchanges has finally been buried. And while the deal to bring Chicago's major twin futures exchanges together (not only under one roof, but also on to one system) makes absolute sense, it is easy to overlook the achievement of bringing these two former rivals together.
It is not so long ago that former executives of the two exchanges, while civil in public, were all but spitting blood at each other behind closed doors.
They have fallen out over all manner of things in the past: over which exchange held the best parties; which was the biggest (until it was decided that one - which will remain nameless - was measuring its size by the square footage of its trading floor and not the volume of contracts traded) and whose electronic system was the best (the year they...