Exchange Invest Weekly Podcast 024

Transcript In people news, “the best of times, the worst of times,” but something very exciting for the Parish throughout. Of course, that's all wrapped in with wonderful letters for Santa, a couple of deals and much, much more! Welcome to the Exchange Invest Weekly with me, Patrick l young.    Before we get down to the weeks wheeling and dealing, this episode of the Exchange Invest Weekly, number 24 no less is recorded against the backstop of it being Saint Nicholas day. What more appropriate message could there be than the fact that on Thursday, the European Union's financial watchdog ESMA called for a single feed for stock prices. across the region. This amounts to perfect seasonal timing to be reporting on St. Nicholas day, and indeed in a world exclusive Exchange, Invest has been able to find the original ESMA memo containing the distributed tape request, which reads as follows:   “Dear Santa, as you may know, our efforts to deliver a consolidated tape across European stock market prices have to date been an even greater failure than our Capital Markets Union plans. Even without the UK, we're still nowhere near getting this done as 27 nations. So as we have all been good boys and girls this year - even the ones in Brussels assure me this is true - We were wondering if you, Santa, could bring us a single pricing stream for Christmas?    Yours sincerely Stephen Maijoor  & the ESMA team.”   And in deal news this week, the Swiss exchange operators SiX have added three major Spanish banks in their attempt to court BME. They've been added to the investment banker register, those people who are going to be working assiduously to get the deal over the line on behalf of the Swiss exchange group. So Santander, BBVA and Caixa Bank have all joined the SiX advisors roster, making for a pretty compelling argument one suspects on the ground in Spain that SiX is leading the way. Indeed, I think that perhaps suggests that Euronext is sitting out the bidding for now. What on earth can be on their minds?    Meanwhile, they did conclude one minor deal this week: Euronext are going to buy a controlling stake 66% of the share capital of the Nordic power market operator Nord Pool - interesting acquisition on top of their Oslo Bors buy to acquire the neighboring energy pool hub physical power market. Not a huge amount of money, the whole enterprise value basis about $93 million dollars, but nonetheless quite interesting, particularly given the fact that Euronext with a 34% minority stake through a joint holding company held by the previous owners, that means that the Paris based or at least, strictly speaking, Amsterdam based, but we all know it's Paris based. Euronext is going to be entering into the power market with strong and experienced partners. That's very, very interesting because of course, it adds Euronext power back into its mix.As you may recall Powernext, which is now part of EAX, which then became part of DB1, was part owned from its foundation in 2000. AD by Euronext but they ultimately sold their stake in 2008, during the Duncan years. It's an interesting low cost acquisition for Euronext which can't do the entity any harm, albeit the asset portfolio is beginning to sprawl a little, even if Nord Pool is Oslo based.   This week we've heard that CBOE amongst others is talking with Euro CCP over a possible takeover. CBOE Europe clearly needs to protect its CCP clearing relationship for cash equities. But at the same time, it's equally possible that several of the other parties that are already shareholders, including for example, DTCC,...