Panelists in the exchange consolidation session at Finextra’s Fintech M&A event in London on Tuesday were asked to look ten years into the future and hazard a guess at the likely winners in the global exchange race. 

Lee Olesky, president of Thomson TradeWeb cast his vote in favour of a new entrant – a Google or Facebook for the financial services industry - based on ongoing advances in technology and market infrastructure. ‘My children are aged between 5 and 10 years old. If I look at the oldest and think of him in ten years time as a trader – he has a totally different way of interacting with people.” 

It’s an interesting way of looking at things. However, one could argue that the Web 2.0 tools of choice most likely favoured by young Master Olesky in the social sphere – instant messaging, mobile communications, video and community-based network interactions – have long been part of the armoury of most market traders  

That’s not to say there are not opportunities for disruptive intervention by well-capitalised left-field entrants. For a hypothetical example of how this might pan out check out amazonbay. 

The amazonbay concept – which posits a new global financial market exchange spawned from the merger of eBay and Amazon – was first mooted by Sean Park of the Sixth Paradigm, during his time as managing director and head of digital markets at DrKW. 

By happy coincidence, Sean also moderated a Fintech M&A panel on convergence in the liquidity provider space. To get his perspective on the event check out the ever-readable Park Paradigm.  

The first three video streams from the conference are now available for viewing on the Fintech M&A page on Finextra, including keynote presentations from Hermann-Josef Lamberti COO of Deutsche Bank and Lloyd Dorfman, chairman of Travelex. The audio soundtrack from the rest of the day’s sessions will be made available early next week.