| Sumario: | Until recently, the number of old-style financial exchanges had been increasing, but this is now changing, thanks primarily to rapid technological advances. Around the world, exchanges are busily forming alliances and paving the way for mergers. Among the factors speeding this process up are the fact that investors are becoming more global in outlook and there is growing competition between exchanges to list securities and attract members; that investment banks' margins are falling, which forces cost cutting; and in Europe, that the launch of the euro currency has added another integrating pressure. It is rapid technological development that is driving all this. The fact that the cost of electronic trading is substantially lower than on traditional exchanges, and because a trading floor costs more money, many exchanges are abandoning traders for electronic systems. Traditional exchanges claim that they are better able to absorb large trades without having a big effect on security, but this is a questionable—technology can already match or improve on the way floors handle big trades.
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