IdaTech, an Oregon fuel-cell company will bypass the New York stock markets, Nasdaq and the NYSE, and list on the London Stock Exchange. The flotation is valued at £100m ($195m).

Observers believe this is another sign that America’s draconian Sarbanes-Oxley legislation is proving a turn-off for U.S. firms.

IdaTech manufactures environmentally friendly generators for industry and for recreational use. Owner Investec, with 96 percent of the stock, is selling between 50 and 60 percent of its holdings.

Following Nasdaq’s £1.9 billion ($3.7bn) deal to buy Swedish exchange OMX, which operates in Iceland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, Dubai has muscled in on the act.

The Dubai International Financial Centre is said to be “the world’s newest international financial centre”. It has appointed HSBC to advise it on a possible challenge for OMX.

On Friday, OMX agreed to be taken over by Nasdaq, the New York exchange, which last year made two failed attempts to buy the London Stock Exchange.

The Nasdaq cash and share deal for OMX would have created a £3.8 billion ($7.5bn) company with operations in eight countries. It would be the third transatlantic merger between exchanges in the past 12 months.

The Times (London) reports, “The DIFC’s decision to consider a counterbid further underlines the international ambitions of the tiny Gulf state. Last year, Dubai Ports World, another arm of the Dubai government, seized control of some of the world’s most important ports when it acquired P&O. The planned bid for OMX signals DIFC’s ambitions to raise Dubai’s profile in international financial markets.”

The Dubai International Financial Exchange, which opened for business in 2005 was intended to “create an environment for progress and economic development in the UAE and the wider region”.

So, the consolidation of the world’s stock markets proceeds apace. In March the New York Stock Exchange completed its acquisition of Euronext, the pan-European borse. Nasdaq claims still to have ambitions to bid for the LSE, but is prevented by City regulations from bidding again until next February.

A combination of OMX, which is being advised by Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, and the slightly larger Nasdaq, being advised by JP Morgan, would create a company worth 30% more than the LSE, which has a market value of £2.7 billion. OMX has a derivatives business that ranks behind NYSE Euronext’s Liffe, and Eurex, controlled by Deutsche Börse. It is considered particularly attractive by other exchanges because of its innovative financial-trading technology.

Nasdaq is planning to use new generation OMX technology as a base for the group, which would, it claims, deliver two-thirds of the £76m ($150m) that may be gained from the merger.

Dubai, however, might just have the last word.

London Stock Exchange’s chief executive Clara Furse has dismissed the rival trading platform, Project Turquoise, as possibly non-viable.

In a confident riposte to the group of seven investment banks seeking to take business from the LSE, she likened the new body to the London exchange’s previous mutual status when it was difficult “to resolve the conflicts of interest that exist when only one part of the market controls the trading platform”.

London remains the most successful of the world’s stock exchanges, raising £54 billion ($105 bn) last year, twice what Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange managed between them. The LSE’s profits rose 73 percent in the same period, with both buoyant Russia and China piling into the light-touch trading regime which is situated in a congenial timezone for their operations.

Furse also believes the rival banks’ platform will not be able to compete with the LSE’s 4pence 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”.

This summer the LSE will unveil its own new platform, TradElect.

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!