A nice outburst of xenophobia here, apparently Deutsche Bourse is going to nick some markets from the City:

Deutsche Börse’s €25 billion merger with the London Stock Exchange will trigger a huge grab of business by Frankfurt from the City, a study claims.

Research, which was commissioned by the German exchange, says that the merger will give Deutsche Börse the opportunity to relocate billions of pounds of derivatives trading from the UK to Germany.

The findings raise fresh questions about whether the deal, which will have to be signed off by the Bank of England, is in the City’s best interests.

So, how is this to be done? It is, after all, customers who decide where they are going to trade:

“Deutsche Börse has a good chance of winning significant long-term market share in the areas of interest rate and currency trading and relocating trading from London to Frankfurt if the market participants in London are given unrestricted access to superior trading platforms in Frankfurt,” Dirk Schiereck, chairman of corporate finance at Technische Universität Darmstadt, wrote in the report.

"Hmm, if we could just get this straight professor. You're saying that a producer who offers consumers a superior product might gain market share? Are you absolutely sure about this very strange idea?"

At which point shouldn't we put that xenophobia back in its box where it belongs?