BC Business
TMX Merger
The proposed merger between Toronto’s TMX stock exchange and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is creating quite a stir back east. But in Vancouver, we're treating with equanimity.
No doubt, rivers of ink will be spilled by Canadian journalists, politicians, and others over the recently announced merger between TMX, which operates the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the TSX Venture exchange (TSXV), and the LSE. Nationalists will decry the loss of another “critical” asset to another country. They’ll only be slightly mollified in that it’s Britain instead of the always feared U.S.
Those of a more practical bent will argue that it’s the only way the two stock exchanges will survive in a modern world.
Politicians, expecting a national election in the spring, will spend a lot of time hemming and hawing while they sniff the wind to see which way voters lean. Already we’re seeing them launch trial balloons regarding the issue.
And here in Vancouver, where we have been through this before, we’ll probably shrug it off. Vancouver, home of junior mining stocks, long ago abandoned its proprietary Vancouver Stock Exchange to the great maw of Toronto, which now calls it the TSX Venture Exchange, a subset of the senior bourse that serves its more powerful Bay Street customers.
There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the time about how our exchange would be swamped by the TSX, but for the most part that hasn’t come true. The world didn’t end; the high flyers still soar; investors still take wild chances; the promoters still promote; and the rogues still … uh … rogue.
If anything, the merger between the VSE and the TSX established some order on Howe Street, which had a bad reputation as a den of pirates who spent most of their time raiding investors’ pockets. So I’m guessing that the reaction here will probably be a big yawn. Yes, the merged exchange will be more distant and probably less friendly. But, at the same time, it will be a world powerhouse in the commodities sector and so will open Vancouver’s mining companies to investment from around the world.
And, despite the tendency in London to see Canada as the proverbial “great white waste of time,” it might make people there finally recognize that Vancouver is rapidly becoming the earth’s mining expertise capital.
I’m sure there are many conversations going on in Scuie and other restaurants around the street about what it all means.
But don’t worry, Vancouver will find a way to make it work for itself.
It always does.