Now’s the time to take back control from Brussels

Once Article 50 is triggered, Britain should not hesitate to take control of competition rules from the European Union, says Matthew Lynn.

17-3-2-LSE-1200

The London Stock Exchange will be stronger for being independent
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

The merger of the London Stock Exchange and Germany's Deutsche Brse was one of the largest deals of the last year. With a combined value of £24bn, the merged company would have dominated European stock trading. Now it looks as if the deal will join the list of mergers that, like Kraft and Unilever or Pfizer and AstraZeneca, just never happened. On Monday, the LSE said that the European Union had demanded it sell off a major Italian unit as a condition of approving the merger. The company decided that was too high a price to pay. It looks as if the deal will fall apart.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.