By Rachel ArmstrongSINGAPORE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Major cross-border
consolidation at Asian stock exchanges won’t happen any time
soon as political interests mean few governments will be willing
to let national bourses fall into foreign hands, senior
executives from the region’s bourses said on Tuesday.”The sovereignty of exchanges as a national asset is
something that we need to continue,” Dato’ Tajuddin Atan, chief
executive of Bursa Malaysia Berhad , said in his speech
at the World Exchange Congress Asia.The last decade has seen major consolidation at European and
U.S. stock exchanges, driven in part by increasing competition
from alternative trading platforms such as Chi-X and Bats Global
Markets.But Asia has largely stayed on the sidelines, with Singapore
Exchange Ltd withdrawing its bid for Australia’s ASX
Ltd in April this year after the government there
blocked it.William Barkshire, senior advisor to the chairman of Hong
Kong Mercantile Exchange, said this was likely to continue for
the next five years.”In the immediate future I see some limited exchange and
post-trade consolidation, but largely being only domestic in
nature,” he said, speaking in a personal capacity.”It will be a long time before it reaches the extent of
consolidation in the west, given political, regulatory barriers,
concern over too rapid deregulation following the western
financial crisis,” he added.Bourses in South East Asia are due to launch the ASEAN
(Association of South East Asian Nations) link, a cross-border
trading platform, next year.But Bursa Malaysia’s Atan indicated this is unlikely to be a
prelude to full-blown consolidation.”In ASEAN the stock exchanges are the country’s national
asset, therefore the sovereignty of the exchange takes priority
over its business obligations,” he said.Seth Merrin, chief executive of global trading network
Liquidnet, said Asian exchanges needed to think beyond M&A if
they want to become global players.”Every investment banker on earth is calling every head of
exchange on earth, telling them all the great opportunities they
could acquire or be acquired by,” he said.”You’ve got to broaden your strategies, think about other
ways you can go global - it’s 2011, the Internet is out there,
there’s connectivity.”
“We have said this before and have conveyed this again, that
if emerging economies and the BRICS are called upon to
contribute, we can do it via the International Monetary Fund,”
one of the sources said. “India is open to it, China and Brazil
are also okay with the idea as well.”Greece, trapped in a deep recession and fighting to control
a public debt expected to reach 162 percent of gross domestic
product this year, is struggling to overcome a crisis which many
economists now predict will end in default.
* Research in Motion said Wednesday that after
three days it was still trying to restore service for BlackBerry
customers spanning five continents.* The president of the European Commission said on Wednesday
that banks should temporarily increase their capital buffers to
better withstand the crisis.* California is the latest state to adopt a statute
permitting what is called flexible-purpose corporations, new
companies that are part social benefit and part low-profit
entities. The companies are now allowed under laws in more than
a dozen states and two Indian tribes.* The publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, a unit of
News Corp resigned Tuesday after an internal investigation
revealed an agreement between the paper’s circulation department
and a Netherlands-based company that was featured positively in
two articles.* Chrysler will add 2,100 jobs in the United States, while
paying smaller bonuses to hourly workers than its cross-town
competitors, under a tentative labor agreement aimed at helping
Chrysler pay off its debt and keep labor costs flat, the United
Automobile Workers union said on Wednesday.* PepsiCo Inc is planning to raise prices on some
Gatorade sports drinks and Frito-Lay snacks in coming weeks to
help offset higher commodity costs.* Sony said Wednesday that it had locked almost
100,000 user accounts on its PlayStation Network and other
online services after detecting a spike in unauthorized log-in
attempts. It was the latest in a series of online attacks on the
company that have threatened to undermine user confidence in its
Web-based offerings.
