Canada faces some tough decisions over the fate of the Toronto Stock Exchange -- does it allow a foreign takeover, or should it opt for a deal giving the country's biggest banks a near-monopoly position? A C$3.6 billion proposal for exchange operator TMX Group (X.TO), from a group of Canadian banks and pension funds called Maple Group Acquisition Corp, is dependent on the TMX swallowing up Alpha Group -- an alternative trading system that has been eating into TMX market share. The Maple proposal would create an entity with more than 80 percent of the market, posing a new set of problems for the Conservative government and regulators. "(It) might create issues around monopolistic and anti-competitive structures in that the combined entity would control the vast majority of exchange transactions in Canada and pricing power would be firmly entrenched," said Darryl Levitt, a mergers and acquisitions expert at Macleod Dixon.
TMX Group Inc. is an integrated, multi-asset class exchange group. Shares of X traded higher by 0.47% or $0.212/share to $44.862. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $36.93 and as high as $64.03. On average, 10271500 shares of X exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 5249485.
Source
