Europe's stockmarkets and futures exchanges, it is often said, are as fiercely competitive as the banks and brokers who trade on them. So when LIFFE, London's futures exchange, decided last month that it would begin trading its German government bond futures 45 minutes earlier each morning, it seemed a fair bet that its biggest competitor, Germany's DTB, would ask its dealers to shake themselves out of bed a little earlier too. Not so. The DTB kept to its trading hours. Instead, the exchange offered to send LIFFE'S traders a complimentary breakfast to fuel their labours. "This is the fun thing about LIFFE," chuckles Werner Seifert, chief executive of Deutsche Boerse, the company which owns the DTB. "They still think the future lies in competition."
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