BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Commission on Thursday said it had opened an antitrust investigation against stock exchange companies Deutsche Boerse and Nasdaq.
Deutsche Bank shares fell as much as 7.3% on the news before paring some losses. By 1120 GMT, they were down 4.2%.
The Commission said it suspected the companies of breaking EU competition rules in the sector for listing, trading and clearing of financial derivatives, contracts whose value changes depending on the price of underlying assets.
“Deutsche Boerse and Nasdaq entities may have entered into agreements or concerted practices not to compete in the European Economic Area,” it said. “In addition, the entities may have allocated demand, coordinated prices and exchanged commercially sensitive information.”
The two companies said in separate statements that the probe refers to a 1999 deal between Deutsche Boerse’s derivatives arm Eurex and the Helsinki Stock Exchange, which was acquired by Nasdaq in 2008, for the Nordic derivatives markets.
“The cooperation was intended to be pro-competitive,” Deutsche Boerse said.
“In particular, it aimed to build deeper liquidity in the respective Nordic derivatives markets and create efficiencies. It provided clear benefits for market participants and was public.”
Nasdaq said the deal had been discussed with the Commission then, and did not encounter any objections until after its end.
“The cooperation delivered clear benefits for market participants,” it said.
Both companies said they took note of the decision to open an investigation and would work with the Commission on it.
A spokesperson for Nasdaq in Finland did not reply to a request for comment.
The Commission said the probe followed unannounced inspections it made at the two companies in September 2024. It will now carry out its in-depth investigation “as a matter of priority”.
It said that anticompetitive agreements and restrictive business practices can preclude the functioning of the European single market due to market fragmentation and skewed prices.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer in Amsterdam, Inti Landauro in Brussels, Alessandro Parodi in Paris, Manya Saini in Bangalore, Tom Sims in FrankfurtFrankfurt and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen; Editing by Louise Heavens)
