Brussels, 31/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - The head of the Deutsche Börse, Carsten Kengeter, was unimpressed with the criticism of the planned merger of the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse that was expressed in Paris on Monday 30 May.
On Monday, at the fourth meeting of the Comité Place de Paris 2020, Gérard Mestrallet, President of Paris Europlace, described as “extremely dangerous” the emergence of this monster, “ten times larger than Euronext in terms of capitalisation and with vertical integration”, according to comments reported by the French daily newspaper Les Echos. He added that the European Commission has a “duty to look at the effects of this competition on the various European markets”. The Governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, said that he was paying “the greatest attention to what is happening with compensation. The operation could create an operator that is 'too big to fail'”. The finance minister, Michel Sapin, took a similar view. “We have been in a process of decreasing risk for a number of years. If there is too much concentration, risks would increase”, as far as we can see it, he said.
Kengeter replied that the French government had a vested interest in undermining the future deal, as the French state holds a 6% stake in Euronext, a direct competitor of the German and British stock exchanges, he was reported as saying in the Wall Street Journal. He added that the deal was unlikely to be concluded before the first quarter of 2017, largely as it will be necessary to wait for the regulators' green light. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)