Investors in the London Stock Exchange have backed its bid to take over Borsa Italiana by a large majority. Some 78 percent of the shareholder base approved the deal, including Nasdaq, former hostile bidder for the LSE which holds 30 percent of the shares.

Chief Executive, Clara Furse said, “This value-creating deal also accelerates our shared vision to become the world’s capital market”.

The Borsa brings a welcome strength in derivatives and fixed-income trading to an often beleaguered London market that let slip the chance to buy Liffe five years ago. The deal will put the LSE in the Footsie 100 for the first time.

It will now be more difficult for any predator wishing to snap up the LSE in future. Nasdaq’s agreement may signal it now accepts that future bids are out of the question.

Recently we reported that London Stock Exchange chief executive, Clara Furse, attacked new rival on the block, Project Turquoise — a trading platform being created by seven investment banks — as non-viable.

Furse claimed the rival banks’ platform will not be able to compete with the LSE’s 4p fee from £1000 worth of shares purchased.

Project Turquoise responded, “We are very much on track to be up and running and reduce the total cost of trading for those who buy and sell shares”.

Soon, however, PT’s seven founders, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, will be joined by another, BNP Paribas of France. Already a formidable alliance, Turquoise now looks a true heavyweight.

Final details of the technology systems to power the platform are close to agreement. If the final result is cheaper trading — and it’s hard to imagine them coming in at a higher price — this will give the LSE a real run for its money.

The kind of complacency that saw London’s Liffe passing to Euronext right under Clara Furse’s nose, must not be repeated here.

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!

After its recent triumph in seeing off a distinctly hostile bid from American exchange Nasdaq, the LSE must be ruminating on its long run of successes in similar defensive situations over the past decade. Can it continue indefinitely?

Chairman, Christopher Gibson-Smith appears relaxed about the whole thing : “I joined [the LSE] because of the almost certainty that this sort of thing would happen.”

No regrets, then? “The succession of attacks against the exchange has disrupted our core business from delivering strategically.” In the end, though, “Everything can be dealt with. Everything is amenable to solution. I don’t engage with the world in terms of perceived obstacles that I can’t deal with. … I don’t regard Nasdaq [with 28.75 percent of LSE shares] as an obstacle to a major deal [with another exchange]. I don’t think we have any idea what Nasdaq wants to do.”

On the presence of other predators in the share register, including the no-nonsense hedge funds, Gibson-Smith says : “We ended up with a third generation of … let’s call them hedge funds, but I think of them more as active pursuers of value.”

Pollyana or realist, the LSE Chairman certainly gives the impression of being on top of a confused situation. As well he might in view of the recent run of victorious outcomes. But what of the new wave of consolidations, especially the new giant emerging on its doorstep comprising the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext and the one that got away : Liffe? And Project Turquoise is still to loom on the horizon.

More later.