High-tech stock market Nasdaq
announced Friday that it will launch in Europe next year, and will base its
new exchange in London.
The U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown applauded Nasdaq’s choice
of location, saying that it was massive vote of confidence for the City and
would be good for the European economy as a whole.
“Job creation and economic growth depend on efficient capital markets
channelling funds to businesses to finance their expansion,” said Brown. “This is more
than ever true in the Internet economy.”
When Nasdaq-Europe launches in the fourth quarter of 2000, European
investors will have an Internet-accessible, high performance trading platform linked
with other Nasdaq markets in the United States and Asia. Although Europe already
has a Brussels-based equivalent to Nasdaq, called Easdaq (European Association
of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation system), it has not to date been very
widely supported.
Nasdaq’s announcement was welcomed by traders, but the news cannot be
entirely welcome at Germany’s Neuer Markt nor at the London Stock Exchange which is
attempting to kick-start its new techMARK index. High-tech companies may
prefer Nasdaq which is already host to such top companies as Microsoft and
Intel.
Nasdaq’s entry into Europe may oblige the various European markets to
cooperate more closely with each other. There is still no common trading
platform between the six European exchanges, although plans have been
initiated to create one.