They should be soul mates but there is little love lost between the Warsaw and Vienna stock exchanges. The contest to be the best bourse in eastern Europe is simply too intense. Warsaw has the upper hand for now. On November 9th its own shares began trading on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (wse) at a 25% premium to the offer price, reducing the government's holding to 36%. The wse is the regional champion in terms the number of initial public offerings, or ipos. It is the only one with a lively futures market. Whereas the group of exchanges connected to Vienna has seen just one ipo since 2007, there have been 25 flotations on the wse so far this year, raising 15 billion zlotys ($5 billion).
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