N.y. Stock Exchange Is Going Global

NEW YORK — For more than 200 years, the New York Stock Exchange has been the symbol of American capitalism.

Now, it's poised to go global.

The exchange's parent company is nearing completion of a $14-billion deal to buy Euronext, an Amsterdam-based company that runs securities markets in five European capitals.

The combination would create the first transatlantic stock market and could become the model for future mergers with stock markets in Asia and around the planet -- a reflection of the seismic forces that are reshaping financial markets.

"It's evolving into a one-world market," said John Steele Gordon, an author and stock market historian. "There's not going to be a U.S., a British or a Japanese market. It's just going to be 'the market.' "

An overriding goal of the merger is to make it easier -- and potentially cheaper -- for investors to buy and sell stocks and other securities on the NYSE and on Euronext's markets in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal.

The exchanges plan to have a single electronic stock-trading platform within three years. The details have not yet been worked out, and regulatory and logistical hurdles could arise. But market watchers say the single platform is the inevitable next step for a financial world transformed by the spread of capitalism and the rise of instantaneous electronic trading.

For small investors, the change could reduce trading costs and, eventually, allow easy buying and selling of stocks around the globe. Although many large foreign companies now trade on the NYSE through securities known as American depositary receipts, many others -- such as cosmetics maker L'Oreal and fashion designer Christian Dior -- are either thinly traded in the U.S. over-the-counter market or not available at all.

Better gains abroad

The merger comes at a time when Americans have a voracious appetite for foreign stocks, with many overseas markets posting far better gains than the U.S. market in recent years.

In the first 10 months of 2006, U.S. investors pumped a net $124 billion of fresh cash into foreign-stock mutual funds, nearly 10 times the $13 billion they stowed in domestic funds.

By moving to meet this demand, the NYSE is continuing the watershed transformation it began two years ago when it started laying plans to abandon its ownership by seat holders.