The New York Stock Exchange-Euronext deal is all but tied up, and Nasdaq is still rubbing its wounds after losing its battle to buy the London Stock Exchange.

Another disappointed suitor, however, has hit back with a major purchase. Deutsche Borse is to pay £1.4 billion for the International Securities Exchange, an options trading platform, based in New York.

The deal will beef up the German exchange’s Eurex derivative platform — a joint enterprise with Swiss exchange SWX. It also smartly tucks away mony the hedge funds were asking to be returned to them.

And what is the LSE doing amid this flurry of activity? Clara Furse is stoutly concentrating on internal matters, like the EDX, its challenger to Liffe which escaped her clutches a few years ago.

Independence means independence then!

The Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) won’t go public and will stand back from the current consolidation mania, which it wisely views as a fad that may be regretted later.

Chief Executive Tom Healy said today that the exchange is too small for an initial public offering, adding it was in no hurry to merge with anyone. “We’re probably too small and we don’t need the money,” Healy told observers at a financial markets conference.

Healy also confirmed that the exchange had not been approached over a takeover. “A corporate event is a good bit of time into the future … some years,” said Healy. One wonders if anyone outside Ireland knows of its existence.

“We outsource our technology from Deutsche Borse. This buys us some time,” he said. “We can afford to watch and see how it all shakes out.”

Now there’s a model that the LSE could follow.