Frankfurt - Deutsche Boerse, the company that runs the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, said Sunday its merger talks with the New York Stock Exchange company had collapsed. A spokesman in Frankfurt confirmed Boerse had been regularly in contact with "potential partners" such as NYSE Euronext, adding, "Insofar as such talks were conducted with NYSE, they have ended without anything being agreed." NYSE Euronext of Wall Street is the world's biggest operator of financial markets.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel had reported Saturday that Boerse's chief executive, Reto Francioni, received a blessing for a 13- page memo on the possible merger from his executive board last week.
NYSE, which runs the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, merged last year with Euronext. Euronext operates markets in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon. Boerse had previously failed in an attempt to take over Euronext.
Spiegel said a new trans-Atlantic merger would have meant enormous changes to the operations of the Frankfurt exchange, with Francioni's review suggesting New York executives would take charge of Frankfurt stock trading.
Trading in derivatives, including futures and options, would have been managed from Frankfurt, while settlements would have been run from Luxembourg under the proposal.
Francioni was to have been given the title of "chairman" of the new company, while Duncan Niederauer, who runs NYSE Euronext, would have been made chief executive.
Johannes Witt, a member of the Boerse supervisory board, told the news agency dpa-AFX on Sunday the board had never been told Deutsche Boerse was in talks with NYSE Euronext.
