Each likes to bang on about the brilliance of their respective trading technologies &ndash SETS

Each likes to bang on about the brilliance of their respective trading technologies – SETS and Connect – and many exchange watchers reckon London would serve its financial institutions better if the two were combined. After all, Deutsche B? and Euronext have found favour among clients for trading equities and derivatives within single exchanges.The LSE’s Clara Furse and Brian Williamson at Liffe have apparently come to the same conclusion, although neither LSE, which is awash with cash, nor Liffe have come out and said so. A merger between LSE and Liffe was probably on the cards as soon as Ms Furse, a former Liffe board member, was appointed in January. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything so consistent with her stated strategy of making the LSE Europe’s “clear market of choice” and admitting new products.There are obvious synergies in harmonising distribution of the two exchange’s services by combining back office functions. Derivatives volumes typically strengthen when equities stagnate, as happened at the beginning of this year, so consolidation would make for an altogether less lumpy revenue stream.

And don’t forget the usual merger benefits in combining head office overheads and making the organisations less vulnerable to bids from their European rivals, which are buoyed with cash from their recent flotations. Doubtless, none of this will be lost on Hawkpoint Partners, the corporate advisory boutique evaluating Liffe for the LSE.With Ms Furse remaining as chief executive, Mr Williamson has been tipped to chair the combined group. Having rescued Liffe from the abyss, he is no stranger to tough decisions (the defunct trading pit is now Liffe’s staff canteen), and is plugged into the City like no one else.Wolves survivesWolverhampton & Dudley has emerged victorious from its epic bar-room brawl with Pubmaster. But at what price? The management sounded just a little punch-drunk as would anyone who had been under siege for a year. When the acceptances were counted up yesterday lunchtime and John Sands, the former folk rocker who now runs Pubmaster, discovered he had fallen 3 per cent short of the winning line, it was 365 days exactly since Wolves first went on bid alert. Robert Breare, the entrepreneur who made the initial approach, did not bid in the end. Instead he threw in his lot with Mr Sands as part of a break-up bid for Wolves.The shareholders, bless ‘em, have rejected Pubmaster’s 513p cash, despite Mr Sands’ confident assertion they would do otherwise, and put their faith instead in Wolves’ belief that there is a future for regional beer companies which own pubs and breweries under one roof.The bid price was not very enticing but then again neither is the fayre on offer from the incumbent management, which has come up with the idea of revamping 200 of its managed pubs under the Bostin’ programme.

The phrase means “great” locally and although it may slip down like a pint of Banks’s in the Black Country, it remains to be seen how well it travels. Wolves’ brokers, ABN Amro, were congratulating themselves yesterday on having successfully defended a second client against a hostile cash bid. But as the first one, Blue Circle, demonstrated, everything eventually has its price.m.harrison independent.co.uk. Investors were cautiously optimistic yesterday that the slowdown in global advertising spending will not deteriorate further after Cordiant, the advertising services group, and Publicis, the Paris-based agency that owns Saatchi & Saatchi, reported mixed interim results.