Exchange Invest Weekly 013

This was the rather epic week when the Hong Kong Exchange surprised us all with a bid for the London Stock Exchange who are eager to imprison themselves in a Sisyphean restructuring - or the acquisition of Refinitiv as it is better known.   Transcript (Links are below) This Week in the business of bourses, Hong Kong makes a surprise bid for the London Stock Exchange. Welcome to the Exchange Invest Weekly.   Welcome to the Exchange Invest Weekly. My name is Patrick L. Young. Thanks for joining us. In the business of bourses this week, obviously, the Hong Kong exchanges surprise bid for the London Stock Exchange scoops the headlines, a $39 billion dollar offer coming out of the blue in many respects, advised by Moelis, seems quite interesting: why only one small investment bank would be the people who are advising Hong Kong exchanges? True, we don't need to have a plethora such as the London Stock Exchange where it's quite embarrassing to see, well essentially pretty much every bank that's ever been known to man or beast, what how many? Wasn't Refinitiv 36? 39?   Something like that.   Anyway, looking at this bid: quite sensational noise, fire, fury and actually nothing totally significant per se with a lot of curious juxtaposition between Hong Kong and China. It was generally a week for the pooling of ignorance amongst the chattering classes of financial media. Those who appeared on TV channels were generally, well, mediocre, frankly, in terms of their insights. The one thing that the Hong Kong exchanges approach has demonstrated so far very clearly is the rather closed mindedness of white middle aged man in London. Apart from that, it's all to play for in this deal, George Trefgarne, Boscobel, PR comms guru wrote a very good blog piece on the topic of the Hong Kong exchange deal during the week, and the glaring comms shambles which, well, it was worth reading whether or not PR fascinated you. I'd already been discussing that topic previously in the course of exchange Invest daily. There are, generally speaking, only a handful at most, of positive correspondents. Maggie Pagano added in a note for subscribers to the reaction service in the UK. Christian May the editor of City AM give it a positive if obviously guarded welcome. But it's a worrying paralysis of negativity from the section of the ‘media analytical complex,’ who are railing against nations curtailing free thinking, but seem broadly incapable of consideration beyond their own narrow white male bourgeois biases, whether within the M25, or indeed, in the case of former chairman of the CFTC Giancarlo - with whom I finally find something to disagree! -  those within the Beltway. It's quite incredible given the fact that actually a successful Hong Kong bid for the London bourse would benefit both cities. This is about creating a mega massive power house between the two largest international financial centres of capital in the world.    Nonetheless, this is of course tinged also with ‘Remoamian’ worry: for this is truly the ultimate deal in Global Britain! Forget LSE Refinitiv. LSE Refinitiv - yes! - built on the principles of global Britain and a post Brexit UK. But of course the terrible problem there is the execution risk. And the more we look at it, the concept of the LSE, itself a not terribly well integrated group trying to swallow whole the frankly irreconcilable to future reconciliation, staff of Refinitiv, nee Thompson Reuters, nee Reuters, is, well... it's impossible to see how they're going to manage to come together. These are people who've survived 10/20/30 years - whole careers, in fact! - with their heads down, effectively avoiding being a finite, organized, progressive, cap...