Nasdaq Seeks Merger With a Europe Exchange

The Nasdaq Stock Market wants to merge with one of the three large European stock exchanges by the end of next year, around the time it hopes to be a publicly traded company, Nasdaq’s Simmons said.

Nasdaq will seek merger talks in the next few months with the London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bourse and Euronext, Simmons said. Deutsche Bourse owns the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Euronext itself is a merger of the Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels markets.

“Our goal is to build a 24-hour-a-day trading platform, with an indigenous exchange” in Europe as well as Asia, Simmons said in a news conference at the Securities Industry Assn.’s annual meeting in Boca Raton, Fla.

Also, Nasdaq’s chief rival, the New York Stock Exchange, said Thursday it would consider moving into a rebuilt World Trade Center. NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso, also at the SIA conference, said the NYSE “will allow the city some time to offer us things” in terms of alternative expansion sites.

The NYSE currently plans to expand at a site across the street from its present location, several blocks from the trade center site.