NYSE Euronext plans to focus on smaller deals and returning capital to its shareholders after its failed $7.4 billion merger with Deutsche Boerse, the company's chief executive said on Friday. "I would not expect us, nor anyone else in the industry, to do a mega-merger any time soon," said Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of NYSE Euronext. "I think everyone is going to kind of take a pause and reassess the landscape.
European anti-trust authorities on Wednesday blocked the merger, which would have created the world's biggest stock exchange operator, making it the fourth among a series of large exchange deals to be blocked over the last year. The European Commission blocked the deal, which had already been approved by US regulators, saying that the combined entity's "near-monopoly" would make it hard for new players to compete. "This (merger) was a game changer," Niederauer said at TD Ameritrade Institutional's national conference in Orlando.