FRANKFURT -- The chiefs of eight European bourses will meet in London on Friday for a second round of talks aimed at creating a pan-European stock exchange, financial industry sources said.
The London meeting follows a gathering of European exchange presidents in Paris on 27 November that set up an Exchange Alliance Committee to begin work on creating a common stock exchange. The meeting will be attended by the heads of the bourses in Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, and Zurich.
Paris bourse head Jean-Francoise Theodore said in an interview published on Tuesday that the bourses would continue to hold technical meetings in coming weeks. But it would take at least a year for the pan-European exchange to become a reality, he said.
Even so, the start of the talks was seen as a breakthrough. It showed the exchanges had laid to rest long-standing rivalries and had begun working on the inevitable consolidation of Europe's financial markets forced by the launch of a single currency.
Many analysts have said it was only a matter of time before the euro and stiffer competition in Europe's financial sector forced other exchanges to join an alliance forged in July by Europe's two largest bourses, London and Frankfurt.
Among the issues that the eight exchanges have yet to resolve is the size of stakes each will hold in the pan-European exchange and what trading system it will use. Industry officials have said the development of an entirely new system might be needed to link the bourses, keen to maintain their separate technical expertise.
Copyright© 1998 Reuters Limited.
