change and the Hong Kong Futures Exchange, and between the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange. Also there are new platforms being formed, especially within Europe, which provide a parallel link between exchanges that list similar products. This is seen with Sweden’s OM/OMLx and Norway’s Oslo Stock exchange developed a shared trading-platform for equity derivative products in Feb 1997, and EUROEX was formed in September 1998, a common trading-platform for German DTB and Swiss SOFFEX. (Bank Of England, 1999). Exchanges such as Brussels, Luxemburg and Amsterdam stock exchanges, all have cross-membership agreements, where under these agreements exchange members have access to products from each of the other exchanges respectively. The Europe’s biggest exchange, the London Stock Exchange (LSE), and the German Deutsche Borse have recently announced a merger in a number of steps are able to electronically access both trading-platforms. (The Economist, 2000) There is also a tie between the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and LSE. The tie is not in a traditional sense, but Clementi (2001) has shown that the UK and the US both have large Cross-border investment, with the UK holding $110billion or 8% of UK GDP in us markets. Clementi (2001) suggests that these unofficial ties, make the UK dependant on the US economy, an therefore making it vulnerably to any economic downturn, as seen at the moment with the speculate US recession. (Bank Of England, 2001:131). The third major change that has been seen is that of exchange ownership is being separated from the members. This has been done in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Milan and Australia, to name just a few. Yet the worlds largest stock exchanges are all still owned by it’s members, and the largest of these, the NYSE, is still run in the traditional floor trading style, while most other world markets are completely automated. There are many pro’s and con&...
