It's taken a long time but it does appear that, eventually, the major European stock exchanges will form an alliance. There are two issues which immediately come to mind. First, if it has taken a year for the eight major exchanges to sign a memorandum of understanding, how much longer will we have to wait before a workable pan-European exchange is up and running. After all, there is still no agreement on such fundamental issues as the technology to be used in any new system, its structure, trading hours and common rules. The suspicion is that there will be many arguments as each exchange attempts to raise its profile in the merged group and impose its existing structures on the new entity.

Secondly, it seems certain that the Irish Stock Exchange will be among the also-rans, reducing still further the role of the exchange and smaller Irish publicly-listed companies. The main players, as of now, are London, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, Madrid, Brussels and Milan.

Whatever happens, it seems the pace of change will ensure that Europe continues to trail the US, where exchanges are moving quickly to amend their structures and expand their businesses to attract European investors.