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Stockholm: For a place causing such a global stock exchange shakeup, the OMX headquarters on the edge of a Stockholm suburb presents a picture of utter calm.
Few people in the area are aware they are living in the proximity of a building that is creating financial news headlines on an almost daily basis.
OMX's neighbours include a ferry terminal, logistics companies and a park, a far cry from busy commercial locations of the company's suitors Nasdaq and Borse Dubai.
"It used to be a factory building," says Heidi Wendt, OMX's vice-president for press and internal communications.
Wendt said when OMX took over the Ford car factory site in 2004, it also agreed to a provision forbidding it from making structural changes to the building. So the OMX office, Tullvaktsvagen 15, is fated to look like an industrial plant from outside.
Inside, it is a quiet workplace. Only occasional visitors, and staff taking a smoking break, are seen at the gate on a normal workday.
Big player
OMX may be located in an old factory building, but the cutting-edge technology and expertise it represents in operating stock exchanges has put billions of dollars in global transactions that will shape the future stock markets from New York to Dubai.
It operates the Nordic and Baltic bourses of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Reykjavik, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. It has 840 companies listed on the main market in Stockholm. OMX has also established itself as a leading technology provider and has 60 exchanges as clients.
Borse Dubai, the holding company for the Dubai's stock exchange business, announced on August 9 that it had bought 4.9 per cent of OMX shares at 230 kronor per unit and had agreements for another 22.5 per cent.
The move threatened to derail an agreed deal between OMX and Nasdaq to combine the two companies to form The Nasdaq OMX Group. Nasdaq had offered 208.1 crowns per share in the 25.1 billion crown ($3.7 billion) cash-and-stock deal.
After weeks of rivalry, Nasdaq and Dubai announced on September 20 a complex friendly arrangement under which Dubai will buy OMX and then sell it to the US company. In return Nasdaq is selling 19.9 per cent of itself to Dubai and has sold 28 per cent of its 31 per cent stake in the London Stock Exchange to the Dubai company.
Nasdaq is also acquiring a stake in the Dubai International Financial Exchange and the bourse will be rebranded Nasdaq DIFX.
The deal however creates a web of exchanges from the US to Scandinavia to the Arab region.
Objective
"Our primary objective is to build a world class, growth-oriented exchange out of Dubai and to become the centre for capital markets activities in the emerging markets," says Borse Dubai chairman Eisa Kazim.
However, the spectre of US politics looms over the Dubai-Nasdaq agreement amid calls by some people in Washington to have it reviewed for potential threats to US "national security" in an echo of the political opposition that thwarted DP World from running key US ports last year.
While Dubai has made friends with a group based in a distant part of the world, it has discovered a new strong rival close to home. Qatar has displayed its financial muscle in a game of one-upmanship with Dubai by buying stakes in OMX and the London Stock Exchange.
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