London Stock Exchange

Earlier this week came news that Australia's Macquarie Bank was considering a bid for the London Stock Exchange. The LSE has apparently been on the block for a little while as it made news a while back when Euronext and Deutsche Börse each tried to bid for the LSE.

For now those efforts have stalled out. CNBC Asia had the most coverage of the Macquarie story and the reports they had seemed to indicate that Macquarie would utilize its ownership of the LSE, if it goes through, in any number of its various infrastructure funds.

Macquarie has created a niche for itself by creating funds that invest in things like toll roads and parking lots and making the funds available to the public. This article in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) quotes J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Johnson as saying intuitively, the idea of buying a stock exchange to my way of thinking isn't too much different to actually buying a toll road. I can see the similarity in that market participants have to pay a toll of sorts to do business through the exchange but I also think an exchange has more moving parts that a parking lot.

Also it is likely that the same folks that manage the LSE now would still manage it if Macquarie took it over.

I find this type of news to be very interesting.