Europe: Bloomberg, beware!

International News

European exchanges are supposed to be one-stop shops, offering everything from derivatives and securities to realtime prices and value-added data. Unfortunately, that last part has had some trouble getting off the ground -- the best effort to date being Deutsche Boerse's

Now the Germans have cut a deal with Spain's Bolsa de Madrid allowing them to buy half of Bolsa de Madrid's news and data service, Infobolsa. The deal was announced in November, less than one month before a long-planned introduction of Spanish news and quotes in German.

Spokesmen for both exchanges were quick to douse any speculation that a higher-level merger between the exchanges themselves could be in the works. "German banks already find access to our markets if their customers demand it," a Bolsa de Madrid spokesman says. "They add value as partner providers of financial news because they have the distribution network, but that's about it."

Infobolsa took in roughly EUR12 million in revenues last year, and the Deutsche Boerse board member in charge of the new Infobolsa joint venture, Christoph Lammersdorf, says the German service should add EUR10 million more - or roughly 5% of the total German market. He says Deutsche Boerse has no plans to compete with established news providers, but would rather look to bundle services from existing providers via terminals it provides.