D.Boerse unveils NYSE deal, faces bumpy road

It is expected to take until the end of the year before the politically-charged deal, which was agreed on Tuesday, can go ahead. "We have a bumpy road ahead of us," said Deutsche Boerse Chief Executive Reto Francioni, who would become chairman of the combined entity.

In a sign of the difficulty of keeping lawmakers and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic happy, the companies parked key questions that could threaten the accord. Foremost among those was what the merged company would be called.

"It's an emotional decision for everyone, let's just be honest about it," NYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer, an American who would head the combined entity, told a press conference held jointly in Frankfurt and New York.

"There's a lot of national pride particularly in the businesses we operate," he said, adding the name would need to address political concerns on both continents.

The deal -- packaged and sold as a merger of equals -- accelerates a wave of tie-ups in the increasingly competitive and global exchange world, where companies are banding together and pushing into derivatives to survive and grow.

Deutsche Boerse shareholders will control 60 percent of the new company and 10 of 17 board seats. Still there are suspicions in Germany that NYSE management will be in the driver's seat, in addition to concerns in the United States that the New York Stock Exchange will lose influence and independence.

That tension could raise political obstacles. Complicating things, the merged entity would dominate exchange-based European derivatives trading -- raising difficult antitrust questions.

"People are worried there could be an extended fight," said Frank Davis, director of sales and trading at Lek Securities in New York. "There may be some nationalistic posturing, especially on the US side now that we know that the majority of board members will be German."

The merged entity will have more than $20 trillion in annual trading volume, and operations spanning the United States, Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium. Company executives stressed that the Big Board -- the two-century-old icon of American capitalism -- would not be harmed; Kazinform cites China Daily.

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