A lady of wealth and tradition awaits her Mr Darcy
The battle for the London Stock Exchange has all the structure of a Jane Austen novel. Miss LSE, demutualised in 2000, was only just out in society when she received and rejected an unwanted proposal from OM, a mysterious Scandinavian. Herr DB from Germany was persistent in his attentions, but his suit failed when he was disinherited by his family. The dashing Baron Euronext has always been in the background. Parisian by origin, he has a trading business in Amsterdam, a Portuguese estate and an elegant London residence, Liffe House, adjacent to the Bank of England. But while he left his visiting card, he never quite made a proposal.
The colonial Governor Macquarie, roughneck but rich, pressed his claims but the people who matter made it clear that he would never be accepted in polite society. And last week an affluent and enterprising American, Mr Nasdaq, asked for the hand of our heroine. While the blushing LSE rejected his offer, we sense she is playing hard to get. The combination of Old World breeding with New World brains and money has been the salvation of many European estates.
Other suitors must now put their hats in the ring. Mr Nasdaq's arch rival, NYSE, may already be on his way to London. He comes from one of the best Manhattan families, more conservative even than Miss LSE's, but still reeling from the dismissal of the grasping steward, Mr Grasso.
The story is reaching its denouement. Mrs Furse will soon be watching her delightful ward walk down the aisle. Only on the last page will we discover who is waiting for her at the altar. The settlement may exceed ￡10 a share.
Why is the LSE so much in demand? Much of the answer is found in that first sentence of Pride and Prejudice. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a growing business in possession of a good cash flow must be in want of an acquisition. But in Austen's day, even the most refined of families would inquire into the antecedents and stability of estates with which they linked their offspring. And so it should be here.
The economics of markets is complex and evolving. Marketplaces are natural monopolies, because both buyers and sellers are drawn to where most business is done. But providing a marketplace is a business only when there is an actual marketplace. Only for idiosyncratic fresh produce - the food market of Rungis and the flower market of Aalsmeer - is this now required. We all know what is meant by the world car market, but only someone who did not know what it meant would ask where it was. You cannot buy the New York art market.
Securities markets are in transition from being personal to being anonymous. The European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive seeks to remove the regulatory requirements appropriate to a physical marketplace from a world in which most trading occurs in cyberspace. This process is inexorable despite the many vested interests in resisting it.
In this new environment money is made only from the activities associated with the market, and the market is no more, or less, than the sum of these activities. Trading is the most profitable, but trading demands the support of a wide range of ancillary services - listing, broking, clearing and settlement, reporting of trades and of news. The continuing business of what we call exchanges, the bodies that once managed the premises where trade took place, is today some combination of these facilitating functions.
Different exchanges offer different combinations. Nasdaq, Deutsche B?rse and the LSE sound as if they are similar businesses with different geographical locations, but they are really different businesses with, prospectively, no geographic location at all. Nasdaq's competitive positionis based on its technology, the business of Deutsche B?rse on its continued dominance of clearing and settlement.
And the LSE? A great name and the inheritor of a great tradition. Mr Nasdaq would not be the first suitor to have paid a high price for little more than a grand title. But such purchasers often do not regret their choice.
“伦交所小姐”为何备受青睐？
伦
敦证交所(LSE)收购战具有简?奥斯汀(Jane Austen)小说的全部结构特征：“伦敦证交所小姐”2000年实行了股份制改革 ，刚刚进入社交界就遇到神秘的斯堪的那维亚人OM集团求婚，她回绝了这份不受欢迎的盛情。来自德国的德国证交所(DB)先生对“伦敦证交所小姐”一片痴心，但由于被家庭剥夺了继承权，他的追求宣告失败。风度翩翩的欧洲交易所(Euronext)男爵一直处在不太显眼的位置。此君有巴黎血统，在阿姆斯特丹有证券交易生意，在葡萄牙有一份地产，另外还有一套高雅的伦敦居所，那就是紧邻英国央行(Bank of England)的伦敦国际金融期货期权交易所(Liffe)。他虽留下名片，却从未正儿八经求过婚。
殖民地总督麦格理(Macquarie)粗鲁但富有，他竭力要求得到垂青，但关键人物明确表示，他永远不会被上流社会接受。上周，一位殷实而有上进心的美国人――纳斯达克(Nasdaq)先生要求与我们的女主人公牵手。虽然“伦敦证交所小姐”红着脸拒绝了他的求婚，但我们感觉到她是在欲擒故纵。纳斯达克先生既有旧世界的教养，又有新世界头脑与金钱，已成为许多欧洲有产者的救星。
其它追求者现在必须加入竞争了。纳斯达克先生的主要竞争对手纽约证交所(NYSE)，应该已经在前往伦敦的路上了。他来自曼哈顿最好的家庭之一，甚至比“伦敦证交所小姐”的家族更保守，但由于贪婪的管家格拉索(Grasso)先生被解职，他的家庭目前仍处于混乱之中。
故事正接近尾声。弗尔斯太太(Furse)将很快看着她可爱的监护对象走向婚礼圣坛。只有到最后一页，我们才会知道谁在圣坛前等她。她的聘礼可能超过每股10英镑。
伦敦证交所为何如此抢手？《傲慢与偏见》(Pride and Prejudice)的第一句话提供了大部分的答案。凡拥有良好现金流、处于增长中的公司，都想找个收购对象，这已经成了一条举世公认的真理。(《傲慢与偏见》原文：凡是有钱的单身汉，总想娶位太太，这已经成了一条举世公认的真理。──编者注) 但在奥斯汀的时代，即使是最优雅的家庭，也会询问对方的身世和财产稳定情况，他们已将这些与自己的儿女挂上了钩。这里也应该是如此。
市场的经济原理复杂且在不断进化。交易场所是天然的垄断者，因为买卖双方都被吸引到了进行大部分交易的地方。但只有存在真正的市场时，提供一个交易场所才有意义。现在只有特殊的新鲜物产才会需要市场――比如兰吉斯(Rungis)食品市场和阿斯米尔(Aalsmeer)鲜花市场。我们都知道世界汽车市场的含义，但只有那些不懂它含义的人才会问它在哪里。你无法去收购纽约艺术市场。
证券市场正经历从有形参与到匿名化的转变。欧盟的“金融工具市场指令”(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)试图取消那些适用于实体交易场所的监管要求，因为当今世界的大多数交易发生在电脑网络空间。尽管有许多既得利益者在抗拒，但这一过程是无情的。
在这个新环境中，人们只能从与市场相关的活动中赚钱，市场则正好是这些活动的总和。交易最有利可图，但交易需要诸多辅助服务支持，比如上市、经纪、清算和结算、交易与新闻报告等。我们口中的交易所是曾经管理交易场所的机构，如今它们延续下来的业务就是这些辅助功能的某种组合。
不同的交易所提供不同的服务组合。听起来，纳斯达克、德国证交所和伦敦证交所像是不同地方的类似企业，但它们确实是不同企业，而且日后可能根本没有地理位置一说。纳斯达克的竞争力源于其技术，德国证交所的业务竞争力则源于它在清算与结算上的一贯优势。
那么伦敦证交所呢？她有如雷贯耳的大名并继承了优良的传统。纳斯达克先生不会是首个为显赫的头衔付出高价的追求者。但这种买主通常都不后悔它们的决定。
