stock exchange for sale
WORKERS, MAR 2005 ISSUE
It may bore British workers to death having regular news bulletins every five minutes on every early morning news programme about inexplicable ups or downs on the markets, foreign markets, this exchange, that exchange or whatever, but something is afoot in the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Now, as well as gambling with workers' livelihoods, the stock and share holders are gambling with their own survival, as if in a giant casino.
In 1986 the London Stock Exchange deregulated itself in what was called the Big Bang, rendering it even more unaccountable and footloose. In 2001, with the creation of the single European market, the LSE and the German Börse started discussions about merger. It was obvious that in the carefully crafted European Union the EU Commissioners were not going to tolerate two centres of finance capital. Either London or Frankfurt would have to go.
This merger was scuppered after a cheeky Swedish bid to buy the London Stock Exchange. In turn this was sunk after a daring but doomed LSE bid to buy the French Liffe exchange. Since then bid and counter-bid has followed as the Germans tried to swallow London, the French outbid them both, while the Swiss, Korean and myriad other financial pariahs hung about, angling for the pickings. Now the French—Dutch Stock Exchange, Euronext, has bid for the LSE, deliberately derailing the German challenge. Stock values for the respective exchanges are up, down and yo-yo-ing around. Someone is making money all the time.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has warned that if a future owner moved the LSE to another country it might no longer be subject to British takeover and corporate governance laws. The FSA might then have to share authority for investigating market abuse with the authorities of the new owner's country.
The cannibalism within the finance houses of the European Union — the ownership of the Square Mile and its institutions, including financial brands such as the Stock Exchange, Lloyds and the Bank of England — is about one global strand of European monopoly capitalism triumphing over all others, and the EU does not care which that is.