Atruth universally acknowledged for some years in Western financial markets has been that a single stock exchange in possession of a good strategy must be in want of a partner. There has been a slew of mergers and takeovers. Asian exchanges, however, have engaged in much more tentative hookups-cross-shareholdings, cooperation agreements and so on. So the announcement on October 25th of an agreed takeover of the Australian Securities Exchange (asx) by Singapore Exchange (sgx), for about $8.3 billion, was rightly presented as historic. That is, of course, if they ever get to the altar.
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