LSE to merge with TMX; Ptasznik to be CFO

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is to merge with Canada’s TMX Group, which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange, to create the world’s largest bourse for mining companies.

Michael Ptasznik, chief financial officer of TMX, has been named as the CFO of the merged group. The LSE was unable to tell Financial Director what part Doug Webb, CFO of the LSE, will play in the new exchange.

LSE shareholders will end up owning 55 percent of the merged entity as part of the all-share merger, which will create the world’s largest exchange by number of total listings – more than 6,700 companies with a market capitalisation of about £3.7tn.

The merged group will be headquartered in London and Toronto and will be led by Xavier Rolet, the LSE’s chief executive who will be based in London.

“We are aiming at nothing less than becoming a true powerhouse in the global exchange business,” Rolet said.

The deal comes after years spent fighting off takeover bids and the LSE’s own merger with Borsa Italiana in 2007. The merger has also been agreed in an environment where a number of leading exchanges have merged in recent years.

Speaking to Financial Director in February 2009 in his first interview since becoming CFO of the LSE, Doug Webb did not rule out the possibility of more suitors for 300-year-old exchange.

At the time of the interview, Webb said market conditions made it quite difficult for anybody to undertake a transaction and doing a debt finance transaction was almost impossible.

“I’ll never say never because I’ll only get proven wrong a month later… but the factors out there seem to weigh against the likelihood in the short-term,” Webb told Financial Director at the time of the interview.

Read our interview with Doug Webb here

Read our profile of Nemone Wynn-Evans, CFO of Plus Markets a London-based stock exchange, here and her first blog for us here