Diploma Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Innsbruck (Banking& Finance), language: English, abstract: Europe is a leading world centre for financial markets alongside North America and theFar East. European securities exchanges play a vital role in these markets by providingcompanies with the opportunity to raise capital and by giving both private and institutionalinvestors the opportunity to invest.There have been three major developments that characterise the changes in the EuropeanExchange landscape over the past twenty years: the globalisation of financial markets, therevolutionary developments of technology, and European regulation. A growing number ofcompanies and banks wish to raise capital in more than one country. Investors too arelooking at integrated or interconnected international markets in order to maximise theirreturn and spread their capital risk. Long term developments such as the introduction of theeuro, the spread of privatisation, the growing number of pan-European mergers and the riseof the retail investor have encouraged closer cooperation and, in some cases, theintegration of Europes formerly diverse and separate equity markets. At the same time,over the past decade, every European exchange membership has undergone a majortransformation. Most have opened up to foreign-owned intermediaries. Trading is executedelectronically, often from overseas.European securities exchanges have risen to these challenges in a number of ways. Severalexchanges increased the number of hours during which trading can take place to enhanceaccess. They also introduced market-making and block-trading to increase liquidity.Additionally, order handling and execution systems were refined in order to boostefficiency and to reduce settlement times. Most exchanges also improved informationsystems to increase transparency and access. By developing new and imaginativeinvestment instruments investment options have been enhanced. Thus, the Europeanexchanges of today rightly present themselves as modern, high-tech enterprises. In severalEuropean countries, whole securities market services groups have grown around thetraditional exchanges. With very few exceptions, the national derivatives markets aregenerally found today under the same roof as the national cash markets. Some of thesegroups even integrated their national clearing and settlement institutions, their IT provider,information distribution services and others. [...]