Deutsche Börse AG plans to introduce a system (Xetra Best) allowing brokers and brokerdealers to internalize the orders of retail customers. Further, Xetra Best supports payment for order flow arrangements. Both internalization and payment for order flow may be detrimental to market quality....

The German financial system is the archetype of a bank-dominated system. This implies that organized equity markets are, in some sense, underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is, first, to describe the German equity markets and, second, to analyze whether it is underdeveloped in any...