Europe’s Stock Markets: North-south split on exchange alliance

The race towards a pan-European exchange speeded up on March 11 when Borsa Italiana, the Italian stock market, agreed to cooperate with the Paris and Swiss bourses in their effort to create a single market for the new century.

With the euro beginning to forge a single economy, investors all over the continent are increasingly demanding standardized rules and one single exchange now that national economic boundaries have been swept away by Emu.

“Without any currency risk, a lot of investors are changing benchmarks and there is a massive asset reallocation going on,” explains Roger Nagioff, head of European equities at Lehman Brothers.