Yahoo Business News is reporting that “South American-focused precious metals firm Hochschild Mining said on Tuesday it planned to float shares on the London Stock Exchange next month.”

Executive Chairman Eduardo Hochschild said : “We have a strong project pipeline and also plan to maximize the potential of our existing operations.”

The company, which produces silver and gold, said in a statement it would seek to raise an unspecified amount of money to finance its Latin American growth strategy.

Yahoo comments : “Hochschild said it planned to increase annual production to approximately 50 million silver equivalent ounces, or 830,000 gold equivalent ounces, from existing operations and development projects by 2011. In 2005, Hochschild produced 10.5 million ounces of silver and 232,000 ounces of gold at a cost of $2.6 per ounce of silver and $170 per ounce of gold.”

This is yet another example of the worldwide trend of listing in London to avoid U.S Sarbanes Oxley regulations and European bureaucracy.

Why wouldn’t the LSE want to stay independent?

Today the handcuffs come off in Nasdaq’s bid to take the London Stock Exchange. With 25.3pc of LSE shares, the American exchange can bid for the rest at £12.43 per share.

However, sources close to Nasdaq say it can’t afford to buy at that price, so is likely to sit out the next six months. The New York-based company is already heavily in debt and may refuse to gamble, especially as it is now known the British Government intends to legislate to protect London from the onerous American Sarbane-Oxley rules and may pack off any bid to the Competition Commission.

The Times (London) reports : “… there were signs at the weekend that some investors were taking the view that, in the short term at least, the LSE share price could fall in the absence of a bid or an agreed deal. About 12 per cent of the shares are the subject of stock borrowing, a technique that is often used to go short in a share in the expectation of a fall.”

Speculation grew that Clara Furse may seek a deal with a Far East exchange.

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.”

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.