Posted in Clara Furse, Consolidation, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, LSE, London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, The Treasury
That’s the cry uttered by Alex Brummer, the UK Daily Mail’s excellent City Editor on the parlous negotiating position of the London Stock Exchange.
In a rallying exhortation to the Great and the Good of the Square Mile and beyond, Brummer duffs up the instigators of the current situation :
That the LSE should have become a pawn rather than a knight in a fight to unify the world’s bourses under global brands is madness. It ought to be in the driving seat of the consolidation.”
This website says Amen to that.
Consider for a moment the advantages currently possessed by the LSE. It’s Europe’s largest cash market. This week it overtook New York in cash raised for IPOs. In AIM, it owns the most vigorous enterprise market in the world.
Brummer writes : “London’s acceleration away from all its rivals post Big Bang in 1986 and Britain’s emergence from the shadow of euroland is one of the great success stories of the 20th century. … The latest trading statement underpins the case for keeping the LSE independent and British-owned.”
With the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, and Treasury Secretary, Ed Balls, seeming to climb aboard the bandwagon, Alex Brummer is surely right to say :
“We must Save our Stock Exchange.”
Posted in Consolidation, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, LSE, London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, Private Equity, Sarbanes-Oxley
Chancellor Gordon Brown and Economic Secretary Ed Balls have signalled concern over an expected bid for the London Stock Exchange by Nasdaq sometime after next Monday’s deadline, but likely to be later in the year.
The word is that a £2.7 billion bid would be referred to the Competition Commission and that may take a long while to report. The worry is that a Nasdaq-dominated LSE would lose many of the overseas listings currently flocking to London.
The LSE said : “We have a very strong business which is going from strength to strength. there are a number of strategic options we would consider.”
Posted in Consolidation, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, LSE, London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, Sarbanes-Oxley, The Treasury
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has supported his Treasury Secretary, Ed Balls, in underlining his wish to protect the London Stock Exchange’s listed companies from rigid U.S. rules should Nasdaq succeed in its takeover ambitions.
Brown outlined the details of regulations to be added to the new Companies Bill now passing through Parliament for addition to the statute book in 2007.
“The proposals we are putting forward,” he said, “are a reminder of what we as a country are expected to do to ensure there is no doubt as to the regulation of the Exchange. This is a national decision. It is the right thing to do.”
Paradoxically, the new rules could facilitate Nasdaq’s bid by lessening opposition in London to the new owners.
It won’t, however, diminish the sense of sell-out of this central institution to London’s place as a world financial marketplace.
