The Regional Stock Markets Integration and the Single European Market in Financial Services

Mergers and acquisitions between stock exchanges does not represent something new for the last couple of years, but until recently (mostly until year 2000) were concentrated mainly at national level, the local stock exchanges in a country accepting the merger between them in order to create a capital market significant at national level. In the last few years, the existence of the single currency, euro, facilitated and enhanced this intent, gave a huge potential to growth for the entire European capital market and opened the road for new integrations (mergers and/or acquisitions between stock exchanges) and thus between markets, but this time at European scale. Usually, such intent has as final objective to become a relevant stock exchange at a global scale, from the point of view of specific indicators, such as market capitalisation or trading volume