Few things, you might think, are as enduring as a national stock exchange. From pillared entrance to pulsating floor, they display an institutional solidarity that can surely defy forces for change. And yet most of the world’s bourses are now in turmoil, as they scrabble to be seen making alliances or mergers, to fend off electronic competitors, or simply to survive. Even New York, the biggest of the lot, is worried: while London, the biggest in Europe, seems to lurch from one misstep to another. (The Economist, 17th June 2000). These missteps have come about from a number of structural changes that have, and are still occurring within national, and global economic environments. A major change is with mergers of many equity and derivative markets, Switzerland 1993, Germany 1994, Netherlands, Finland, France and Austria in 1997. (Bank Of England, 1999). This and other changes such as cross member ship agreements and new parallel links between exchanges, have, and still are creating and manipulating the international markets. The essay will then explain why these changes have occurred, looking in depth at technology advances, technology and scale of economies, technology and competition, cross border investment, globalisation and new role taken by finical intermediaries, providing specific examples of these changes seen with current examples. The essay will conclude with a brief summary of what the larger markets are doing to combat this changes. There have been two major structural changes in markets over the past decades. The first of which is the mergers between equity and derivative exchanges within countries and secondly the new types of links, created by technological advances between exchanges. Firstly mergers between equity and derivative markets like the aforementioned Swiss, German, French, Netherlands, Finnish and Austrian markets. It also should be noted other links now exist, or soon will, like the Hong Kong Stock Ex...
