This website londonlovesbusiness.com/lse-deutsche-borse-merger-bafin-chief-against-london-as-hq/ is currently offline. Cloudflare's Always Online™ shows a snapshot of this web page from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. To check for the live version, click Refresh.

LSE-Deutsche Borse merger: Bafin chief against London as HQ

by June 29, 2016

written by 29^th Jun 16 11:24 am

Planned merger could face regulatory opposition over the London location of the combined company

The president of the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin), Felix Hufeld, said on June 28 that he could not envisage the headquarters of a merged London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse being in London.

Hufeld told the press in the margins of a conference that he found it difficult to imagine that the main exchange in the euro zone would have its base in a country outside the European Union.

LSE and Deutsche Boerse’s planned merger could face regulatory opposition over the London location of the combined company’s planned headquarters. German regulators and politicians had voiced concerns over the planned “HoldCo” HQ location in London rather than Frankfurt already before last week’s UK vote to leave the EU: Brexit may turn this into an even bigger stumbling block.

Any move to shift the HQ to Frankfurt would destroy the deal in its current form.

Bafin reports to the Federal Ministry of Finance.

This story first appeared on Acquisitions Daily, a leading publication that provides critical comment, analysis and statistics on every important issue in acquisitions, mergers and buyouts. Sign up here for a free trial.