Modern Changes In International Equity Markets Essays - Economy

Modern Changes In International Equity Markets Few things, you might think, are as enduring as a national stock exchange. From pillared entrance to pulsating floor, they display an institutional solidarity that can surely defy forces for change. And yet most of the worlds bourses are now in turmoil, as they scrabble to be seen making alliances or mergers, to fend off electronic competitors, or simply to survive. Even New York, the biggest of the lot, is worried: while London, the biggest in Europe, seems to lurch from one misstep to another. (The Economist, 17th June 2000). These missteps have come about from a number of structural changes that have, and are still occurring within national, and global economic environments. A major change is with mergers of many equity and derivative markets, Switzerland 1993, Germany 1994, Netherlands, Finland, France and Austria in 1997. (Bank Of England, 1999). This and other changes such as cross member ship agreements and new parallel links between exchanges, have, and still are creating and manipulating the international markets. The essay will then explain why these changes have occurred, looking in depth at technology advances, technology and scale of economies, technology and competition, cross border investment, globalisation and new role taken by finical intermediaries, providing specific examples of these changes seen with current examples. The essay will conclude with a brief summary of what the larger markets are doing to combat this changes. There have been two major structural changes in markets over the past decades. The first of which is the mergers between equity and derivative exchanges within countries and secondly the new types of links, created by technological advances between exchanges. Firstly mergers between equity and derivative markets like the aforementioned Swiss, German, French, Netherlands, Finnish and Austrian markets. It also should be noted other links now exist, or soon will, like the Hong Kong Stock Exchange 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 Swedens OM/OMLx and Norways 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 SOFFE X. (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 Europes 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 ma jor 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 its 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 pros and cons of a floor trading system, but with nearly every market, and all newly established markets being fully automated, there is becoming less and less support for the traditional exchange floors. Technological advances have enabled many if not all parts of the trading process to be completely automated. In 1996, the Australian Treasurer announced an inquiry into the Australian finical system. This report is the Wallis report, it was able to conclude, among many other things that Technology development and innovation