Deutsche Börse to appeal EC ruling on NYSE merger block

20 March 2012

Deutsche Börse said it considers the decision by the European Commission to block the deal to be "faulty" in several respects and will take its complaint to a European court in Luxembourg. It did not specify to which aspects of the Commission's ruling it is objecting.

Germany's Deutsche Börse said Tuesday it will sue the European Union's competition regulator over its decision to block the company's $10 billion merger with NYSE Euronext.

The merger of Deutsche Börse and NYSE would have created the world's largest financial exchange operator but the Commission blocked the deal on February 1.

It argued that the combination of Deutsche Börse's Eurex and NYSE's Liffe derivatives exchanges would have given the company a dominant position in the market for exchange-traded derivatives. Derivatives are complex financial products that allow investors to bet on changes in the price of financial instruments, such as oil, interest rates or stock indexes.

Officials from the companies have said in the past that the regulator should have used a broader definition of the derivatives market for its decision.

Press release


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