The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating Nasdaq’s proposed $190-million takeover of the SunGard-owned ECN Brut on competition policy grounds. There were no anti-trust objections when Instinet bought Island in 2002, or when Archipelago (now the ArcaEx exchange) acquired two competitors, RediBook and GlobeNet.
Brut is the second-largest ECN, and if the acquisition goes ahead the US market will have a choice of three ECNs: Nasdaq, ArcaEx and Inet (the enterprise formed by the merger of Instinet and Island).