London 25/05/2016 - Opinion pieces are the views of the author: they do not represent the views of FastMarkets
Like so many before it, yet another venerable British institution - the Baltic Exchange - is facing a future under new overseas ownership, an increasing sign that money has no boundaries in a shrinking international marketplace.
The Baltic Exchange, the world's premier maritime trading and information hub - today entered into exclusive talks with Singapore's premier financial exchange, SGX, to sell itself in a transaction that may not see much change out of $100 million.
If and when this goes through, it will bring down the curtain on 272 years of independence - the Baltic is owned and run by its 650 or so members. Asia's SGX will have beaten off competition from other would-be keen buyers, such as the LME, which is itself owned by China's HKEX, and agency Platts, part of the US's McGraw-Hill Group.
Among the Baltic's key assets are its FFA trading platform - Baltex - and its collection of key freight indices, such as the Baltic Dry Index, that form the cornerstone of global commodity shipments and transactions.
Of course, SGX has made several commitments to alleviate member concerns, some of which are 'motherhood and apple pie'. Its HQ will remain in London - hardly surprising as this has time-zone advantages for doing business. It is where Asia, Europe and America can come together. And it will retain dispute resolution, social and charitable activities.
SGX has also given guarantees that it will keep subscriptions and FFA fees at current levels for at least five years. All well and good, and five years is quite long - it is half a decade. But all guarantees run out, and as LME members will ruefully say, when the three-year safeguard it got from HKEX expired fees changed - and they didn't go down.
And January 2015 also saw the start of further changes for the LME, which is becoming a different exchange to what it was pre-sale. Probably that will happen with the Baltic five years down the line, and it will lose its distinct identity.
In the end, though, is it a concern that another hallowed unique City of London institution could go the way of pin-stripes, bowler-hats and long lunches? After all, London's soft commodity, financial futures and energy markets have all long since being subsumed by overseas buyers. And the grandest and poshest of the lot - the London Stock Exchange - is currently in talks to 'merge' with Germany's Deutsche Bourse.
It is a sign of globalisation. The world we do business in is now much more joined-up - fungibility is what it used to called. In an era where oversight, compliance and regulation - and even taxation - is on the way to harmonisation, who owns what does not really matter any more.
In football, the EPL's football big hitters - the big London clubs, the two Manchester clubs and even top-dogs Leicester - all have foreign owners. They are global brands and their customers (fans) don't really care as long as they are successful.
It is the same with markets - the users simply want an efficient place to do business in. The flag flying over the building is irrelevant now.
So what's left of the blue-blooded stand-alone London institutions? How about the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) as it moves down the commercialisation route. For sure, there are interested parties, who will be sniffing around.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)