The long-awaited counterbid for the Scandinavian stock exchange group, OMX, by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) could be made this week.

Advisers, UBS and Goldman Sachs are said to be on standby for the event.

The new bid is expected to be up to 20 percent higher than rival Nasdaq’s agreed $3.7bn (£1.9bn) merger offer already on the table.

DIFC is understood to have amassed a stake in OMX of around 4 - 5 percent in the open market, which is below the 5 percent level where a bid must be declared under Swedish rules.

A Dubai director recently said that “the sky’s the limit” for its international investment ambitions.

American regulatory filings show that 35 foreign companies have delisted from American stock exchanges since April.

Rising costs, over-regulation and a culture of litigation have been cited as reasons for the exodus. In addition, US investors are preferring to buy stocks directly in overseas markets rather than from secondary listers in America.

British Airways, Danone and ICI have all described multiple accounting standards, lower trading volumes and near-draconian compliance under Sarbanes-Oxley law as reasons for turning away from secondary listings.

London is seen as the main beneficiary of this trend.

Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal is being sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

Dow Jones is reported to have agreed a $5 billion. Negotiations have been completed and the board is confident the terms of the deal will be accepted by the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of voting shares in Dow Jones, over the next few days. A formal announcement is expected next week.

The Business Online exclusively reports :

Murdoch’s News Corporation will take over America’s most prestigious financial publisher at the price he originally offered on April 17, when he proposed $60 a share when the stock was trading at $36, a 67% premium … The arrangement is a tougher version of the one put in place by the British government when Murdoch bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981. Murdoch will have less control over the independent directors at the Journal than he does at Times Newspapers, where they are regarded as weak and ineffectual. But one source, acting for the Bancrofts, admitted privately that the Dow independent panel was only a “fig leaf” to facilitate the sale and that over time Murdoch would get round it.

Stay tuned for more news from the billabong.

Update: Wired is reporting a refutation of this story : “An article published on Thebusinessonline.com this morning stating that an agreement in principle has been reached for the sale of Dow Jones & Company to News Corp is incorrect.”

Heads up Robert Scoble.

The London Stock Exchange retained its number one spot as the world’s most successful borse in the first half of the year.

A report from Dealogic gives the LSE initial public offerings worth £16.8bn ($34bn), compared with New York’s £15.1bn ($31bn). Hong Kong trailed in third place with just £7.4bn despite its proximity to the burgeoning Chinese growth engine.

With reports that this bonanza may have peaked, especially from Russia, Michael Long, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, said : “There is a concern that a lot of the Russian listing is a bit bubbly.”

However, he didn’t see much sign of New York improving its relative market share on IPOs. “It’s cheaper to do them here, regulations are less complicated and strenuous, and they argue there’s a bigger international investor base here than in the U.S.”

The good times continue.