Stock Exchanges

The major U.S. stock exchanges will be closed Tuesday to mark the death of former President Ford, leaving stock trading suspended for an unusually long four consecutive days. The New York Stock Exchange on Friday joined the Nasdaq Stock Market in saying it would not open Tuesday. The closing is unusual because trading was already slated to be shut Monday for New Year's Day and U.S.

Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. said Thursday that it would close Tuesday in honor of former President Ford. The New York Stock Exchange may shut down as well but had not announced plans as of late Thursday. A full-day closure for the NYSE, the world's largest stock exchange, would continue an almost four-decade tradition of marking presidents' deaths by halting trading for an entire day.

The Big Board is getting bigger. Shareholders of the New York Stock Exchange's parent company voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to purchase a European stock exchange company in a landmark $14.6-billion deal that creates the first transatlantic stock market. The acquisition of Euronext was approved by 99.7% of NYSE Group Inc. shareholders. The deal is seen as the first step in a planned global expansion.

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.

Mexico's stock exchange, riding a recent wave of investor interest in emerging markets, plans to list its own shares in 2007. The exchange said Tuesday that its board of directors had approved a plan to start reorganizing the company, owned by major market participants, with the goal of going public. The stock exchange said it was following a trend toward mergers and public listings of bourses around the world.

The company that owns the New York Stock Exchange said Wednesday that it would slash its workforce by 17%, a sign that the rise of automated trading is reducing the role of old-fashioned floor trading. NYSE Group Inc. said it would eliminate 520 positions from its roughly 3,000-person workforce over the next five months. The announcement came a week after the exchange said it would shut down part of its famed Lower Manhattan trading floor to cut costs.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest U.S. stock-option market, sold a membership seat for a record amount Wednesday, a day after the exchange's parent agreed to be acquired by the owner of a rival operation. The $1.51-million sale of the rights to trade on the market topped Tuesday's sale of four seats for $1.5 million per seat, the exchange said in a statement. The previous record of $1.4 million was set Aug. 15.

The nation's two largest futures exchanges announced plans Tuesday to join forces in an $8-billion deal that reflects the growing role of trading in complex financial instruments tied to interest rates, foreign currencies and even the weather. Under the deal, the parent company of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will buy the holding company that runs its longtime rival, the Chicago Board of Trade.

Erik R. Sirri, an economist who specializes in the structure of securities markets, has been named the new director of market regulation at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency announced Monday. The appointment by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox fills a high-level position at the agency, leading the division overseeing the nation's stock exchanges, which has been without a permanent director for months. Sirri, 48, was the SEC's chief economist from 1996 to 1999.

After a gut-wrenching spring plunge, many foreign stock markets have returned to a familiar pattern: They're sharply outpacing the U.S. market. Hong Kong's main stock index, the Hang Seng, hit a six-year high last week. India's Sensex index has rebounded 27% since mid-June, and the French market's CAC index has risen 9.3% in the same period. By contrast, the U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 index has inched up 3.6% from its mid-June low. Analysts say the snapback overseas, while many U.S.