Reuters – Long-term investors in the world’s largest stock exchanges should watch out for short-term hedge funds driving them into bad mergers, the head of the New York Stock Exchange was quoted in anewspaper on Monday as saying.
The prospect of consolidation is gripping equities markets, with the NYSE (NYX.N) and Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE) both expressing an interest in Euronext (ENXT.PA), while Nasdaq (NDAQ.O) is courting the London Stock Exchange (LSE.L).
But the Independent newspaper quoted John Thain, NYSE chief executive, as saying the animus for a Deutsche Boerse-Euronext deal was mainly coming from hedge funds, such as TCI, which hold stakes in both firms, with little thought for long-term value creation.
“You have to remember that TCI has a very, very large stake in Deutsche Boerse, and their biggest concern is how to get out of that,” Thain was cited in the newspaper as saying in a dispatch from New York.
