New York Stock Exchange Goes Global With European Merger

NYSE Group Inc. will take its biggest step Wednesday toward becoming a truly global financial player when it closes a deal to create the first trans-Atlantic stock market.

The New York Stock Exchange consummates its $11 billion takeover of Paris-based exchange operator Euronext NV at ceremonies in the U.S. and Europe. The combination into NYSE Euronext forms the world's biggest stock market, and ushers in a new era for financial markets where securities can be traded on two continents up to 12 hours a day.

It will be a crowning achievement for John Thain, the former president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who became chief executive of the now 215-year-old NYSE in 2004.

Thain and NYSE Chairman Marshall Carter will be in Paris Wednesday morning to launch NYSE Euronext's first day of trading in Europe. They'll be joined by Euronext Chairman Jan-Michiel Hessels and Chief Executive Jean-Francois Theodore.

All four executives will then fly back to New York to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Thain will remain chief executive of the new exchange holding company, while Hessels becomes chairman.

The deal, announced last May, was overwhelmingly approved by Euronext shareholders in December and sailed through European regulators with relatively few problems. Euronext encompasses stock markets with headquarters in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Lisbon, as well as the London derivatives market LIFFE.

It gives the NYSE a competitive advantage over rival Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., which failed in its hostile attempt to buy the London Stock Exchange.