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.

This has been a record year for world stock markets with IPOs raising £116 billion ($227bn), according to Ernst & Young.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange did best, grabbing 17pc of the total. But the London Stock Exchange came a close second, with 15pc, ahead of the New York exchange on 11pc, Euronext on 8pc, and Nasdaq, at a lowly 6pc.

Much of the bonanza has come from Russian and Chinese companies seeking havens in lightly-regulated financial centres. The LSE has scored heavily over the American outfits because of the negative effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

With the country’s electricity sector starved of investment, Russia’s biggest power company is planning an £800m float on the London Stock Exchange which would value the company at £3.2 billion.

The UK Independent newspaper reports : “UES, which owns the country’s power stations through dozens of operating companies such as Mosenergo, wants to raise almost £42bn for the investment-starved electricity sector by the end of the decade. If approved, a listing could see 25 per cent of Mosenergo’s equity listed in London and would take place early next year. Another UES subsidiary, OGK 5, is also planning a listing in London later this year as part of the group’s restructuring. But Mosenergo, also known as TGK 3, is much bigger than its Urals-based sister company”

Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft listed in London in July, raising £5.6bn. The successful flotation has encouraged the Kremlin to raise more funds in this way.