Plus Markets, whose quote-driven trading platform allows AIM-listed shares to be traded outside the main London Stock Exchange, has seen off an LSE challenge to its activities.

The LSE has been forced to withdraw its disputed rule changes for AIM companies admitted to other platforms.

Plus Markets’ Chief Executive, Simon Brickles believes the LSE was “clearly frightened of Plus Markets’ early success in attracting market volumes.”

The Karachi Stock Exchange, Asia’s second-best performing market last year, will set up branches in New York, London and Dubai in the next four years to tap demand from expatriate Pakistani and overseas investors, reports Bloomberg.com.

“There are a large number of expatriate Pakistanis who want to have links with this market and are rich enough to do so,” Maudood Ahmad Lodhi, managing director of the Karachi exchange, said in an interview on June 23.

Pakistan is wooing investment to fuel a $118 billion economy that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz predicts will expand at an annual pace of as much as 8 percent over the next five years.

I wonder when Karachi will take a pop at the London Stock Exchange?

With the possibility of a merger between Euronext and Deutsche Borse again being discussed, the German exchange is saying it no longer contemplates a top position for Euronext’s Chief Executive, Jean-Francois Theodore.

‘You can’t want to give responsibility to someone who clearly wants to torpedo the operation,’ reports Agence France-Presse.

Earlier this week, Deutsche Borse put forward a modified merger offer, making some concessions to Euronext. But Euronext again flatly rejected the German group’s advances, says Forbes.

An unnamed supervisory board member told the German edition of the Financial Times that Theodore would not be nominated for the position as Chairman of the supervisory board.

“Deutsche Borse declined to comment on the future of Theodore within a merged group, with a spokesman only pointing out that the latest offer does not mention the Frenchman’s name. In May, the Frankfurt stock exchange had suggested appointing Theodore as head of the new group until 2008.”

The New York Stock Exchange.

Fox News is reporting the story we published earlier this week, that the New York Stock Exchange is actively contemplating setting up a London-based rival to the New York Stock Exchange:

“NYSE Group Inc. (NYX) would consider creating a rival London exchange to compete with the London Stock Exchange for new listings, but had also not ruled out bidding for it … ‘There would be two options (if a combined NYSE/Euronext cannot compete for international listings),’ NYSE Chief Executive John Thain [said]. ‘The first of which would be to set up our own exchange in London. However, I would not rule out the other option (buying the LSE),’ he added.”