The race to a single European exchange

Imagine a single stock exchange on which you could trade freely in the shares of any European company - an exchange where you could buy Deutsche Telekom as conveniently as BT. This is the dream of investors, stockbrokers, finance directors and politicians across Europe. But although breakthroughs in communications technology are finally making this possible, the complex network of regulatory regimes, differing tax structures and vested interests of existing stock exchanges have slowed the pace of change. At the same time, new agreements seem to be announced every month, of which the one be...