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Swiss eye new exchange
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May 23, 2000: 3:58 a.m. ET
Zurich market may tie with Tradepoint to create new electronic exchange
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LONDON (CNNfn) - The Swiss stock exchange announced plans on Tuesday to team up with London-based Tradepoint Financial Networks to create a pan-European electronic stock exchange to offer trading in the region's blue-chip companies.
The combination of the third-largest European bourse with Tradepoint, whose investors include a slew of global investment banks, comes at a time of rapid consolidation among European equity markets.
The supervisory board of Frankfurt's Deutsche Boerse is due to meet later Tuesday to vote on its proposed merger with the London Stock Exchange, while the exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels have already agreed their own merger pact.
SWX, the company that runs the Swiss exchange, said it had entered "exclusive negotiations" with Tradepoint, a firm set up in London in 1996 and controlled by a unit of financial information firm Reuters Group (RTR) together with banks including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MDW: Research, Estimates), JP Morgan (JPM: Research, Estimates) and Switzerland's UBS.
Tradepoint plans to launch its index of 300 European blue chips on July 10. SMX said the latest talks revolved around its provision of an advanced trading platform to support the Tradepoint launch. Investment banks are keen to increase their use of electronic trading systems to cut transaction costs.
Under the proposed merger of the London and Frankfurt exchanges, London would become the base for trading in the shares of Europe's largest companies while younger, high-growth stocks would be traded in Frankfurt. 
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