International Business

France Opens Access to Stock Market: The French Cabinet has adopted a bill that ends the monopoly enjoyed by about 55 stockbrokers, complying belatedly with European Union rules. The reform will also allow France to conform with the European Union’s directive on investment services, which calls for greater opening of financial markets among the EU’s 15 members. The European Union’s Investment Services Directive was intended to sweep away restrictions on which companies can trade stocks, and where they need to be located, beginning Jan. 1. Only four of 15 EU nations had passed the directive into national law by the end of last year, according to the European Commission.