According to the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, the “process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”. It is therefore apt that the investment exchanges, the places where investors and issuers meet at the crossroads of capitalism, should be exemplifying this so fully.

It is unusual to see the competitive market operating at full throttle in financial services. Ironically for an industry that is capitalism’s battering ram, parts of it appear to be oligopolistic, protected from competitive forces by high barriers to entry and a cozy deal between customers and suppliers. Exchanges, by contrast, have met technological change and globalisation head on. The result has been a state of constant reinvention culminating, in the past five years, in a series of transformational mergers.

Perpetual thrust and parry amongst exchanges has occurred in every major financial jurisdiction. In the US, Nasdaq, a market that was only formed in 1971, often out-traded the long-established New York Stock Exchange in the early years of this century. Determined to be part of