Latin American Capital Markets

PROMOTING REGIONAL CAPITAL MARKET INTEGRATION 179tors) compete with each other to attract listings and in which the providers of tradingsystems (exchanges or other forms of organization) compete with each other toattract trading. Nevertheless, there have been various cooperative attempts at promotingcross-listing and/or cross-trading, most of which have failed.The most ambitious cooperative attempt at allowing companies listed on oneexchange in a region to be listed and traded on other exchanges in the region was aproject called EuroList, which was proposed in 1990 by the Federation of Stock Exchangesof the European Community (now called the Federation of European StockExchanges).The aim of EuroList was to allow the largest European companies to beofficially and simultaneously listed, and thus traded, on all stock exchanges in the EuropeanUnion. It was thought that this would be advantageous to issuers because theywould gain a European status by being showcased on such a list and to investors,thanks to multiple market access and, it was hoped, increased liquidity. Investors wouldalso be able to trade on their national stock exchange. It was anticipated that companieswould be required to pay a listing fee for multiple listings, in addition to theirnational listing fee, and that each country would choose the domestic companies thatit wished to quote on the European list. Prices of multiple-listed issues would bequoted in their domestic currency, in the currency of the national exchange on whichthey were quoted, and possibly also in European currency units. A central element ofthe project involved the creation of a network that would enable a company to giveinformation to the domestic exchange on which it was listed, which could in turn thentransmit the information instantly to the other exchanges on which the company'sshares were listed.For several reasons, the Eurolist project was never implemented. It was seenby the London Stock Exchange (LSE) as an attempt by the continental Europeanstock exchanges (particularly those in France, Belgium, and Italy) to buttress theirpositions against the perceived success of the LSE in attracting trading in continentalEuropean stocks. Another reason why the project failed was that there was little demandfor it by the major European corporations.Information DisseminationInformation dissemination is the act of transmitting pre- and post-trade data aboutquotes and trades, respectively, to market participants. 24 In a regional context—specifically,when there are multiple arenas in which trading may be undertaken—a keyCopyright © by the Inter-American Development Bank. All rights reserved.For more information visit our website: www.iadb.org/pub24 This discussion is drawn from Lee (1999, pp. 121-28).