Rumors of an imminent announcement by OMX and LSE were followed instead by an announcement from OMX and Nasdaq – specifically, that OMX had agreed to be taken over by Nasdaq for nearly $4 billion. The deal makes sense on two fronts – first, OMX has a network of exchanges across Northern Europe and the Baltic region that have done exceptionally well in light of the small numbers of listings generated in those countries. Second – and perhaps more importantly – because both OMX and Nasdaq have had designs on the London Stock Exchange. Nasdaq has a 30% stake in the LSE, while OMX is majority shareholder in EDX, the joint derivatives venture that OMX and LSE run in London.
But now new reports are surfacing of a counter-offer from Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), a state-run business park in the United Arab Emirates that owns the Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFE). The man in charge of DIFE: former OM boss Per Larsson, who had been laying low since being squeezed out of OM after it merged with the Helsinki Exchange to form OMX. He took the Dubai job last year.
Larsson had taken over from OM founder Olof Stenhammar in the 1990s, and was an early mover on scores of innovations that have since become mainstream – among them the clearing of OTC products, which is EDX’s core business…