Under the counter

Moving on downIt seems like just yesterday that I was regularly able to fill my column with the latest gossip swirling around Eurex's assault on CBoT's US Treasury stronghold; the whole affair certainly provided me with plenty of free column inches, from free I-Pods to party battles, pausing along the way to take in the ever-changing masterplan of Eurex's misunderstood mastermind Rudi Ferscha. Even though all that business happened nearly three years ago now, it goes without saying that there was no way Eurex could throw a stone that big into (and across) the pond without the ripples continuing for some time. For instance, this time last year who would have predicted that by the end of 2007 CBoT would not even exist as an independent entity while Eurex US would have moved into the Chicago powerhouse's former office building? Sadly for the Europeans, this extraordinary state of affairs, if...