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The U.S. and Europe should be able to achieve a single accounting standard by 2009, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Committee, Christopher Cox, said Sunday.

Cox was appearing on a panel at the German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum. In other comments, he said the SEC was proving able to modify the U.S.’s Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to meet European concerns and that he expected the accounting progress to become a key part of a new transatlantic partnership on eliminating regulatory divergences.

U.S. President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are due to sign a new regulatory partnership Monday in Washington. The deal will create a transatlantic council to set priorities. Accounting standards are a “wonderful example,” a “tangible result” of what the new accord can achieve, Cox said. Progress towards common accounting standards is “going swimmingly,” he added. Specifically, he said the SEC was already willing to allow foreign issuers of securities to report results either in the IFRS international standards or the U.S. GAAP standards. It soon will consider whether allowing U.S. issuers to have a similar choice, he added.

European and U.S. regulators are working together well, Cox continued. He noted how they had managed to avoid a “calamity” when the New York Stock Exchange took over Euronext. He also noted how the SEC had managed to be “attentive to European concerns” about Section 404 of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which required strict internal audits of corporate accounts.

MarketWatch: SEC’s Cox sees common accounting standards by 2009

A vast transatlantic stock market emerged on Tuesday when the New York Stock Exchange won control of pan-European market operator Euronext, creating an entity worth 29 billion dollars linking trading platforms in six cities.

The two markets said in a statement that the NYSE had acquired 91.42 percent of Euronext capital and 92.22 percent of the voting rights according to a provisional tally of shareholder acceptances.

The new leviathan, creating the first inter-continental stock market capitalised at about 22 billion euros, will bring markets in New York, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Lisbon under one group and will also include the Liffe financial futures market in London.

A vital point is that companies quoted on each market will continue to operate under existing regulations. European companies will not be affected by severe accounting rules, as stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which are much criticised in the United States for increasing costs on quoted comapnies.

Yahoo: NYSE buys Euronext, forming first inter-continental stock market

The European alternative to the Alternative Investment Market will be on a road show in London this week in search of new investors.

Alternext, which is owned by Euronext and hosts listings in four other European capitals, denied it will be trying to take business away from AIM.

However it will be targeting firms who wish to invest in London’s less-regulated market.

Director of listings and issuers of Alternext, Martine Charbonnier, said the greatest potential sources of companies listings on Alternext were developing countries and the US, where smaller businesses have difficulty in listing due to the heavy regulation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

AccountancyAge: Rival to AIM hits London

Clara Furse, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, plans to keep Nasdaq at bay, and on Thursday, she put money on it.

Furse has said privately in recent weeks that she would prefer to keep the exchange from Nasdaq’s clutches, and then promote its liberty from U.S. regulators after its rival Euronext pairs up with the New York Stock Exchange.

On Thursday, the London exchange pledged to buy back as much as £250 million, or $493 million, in shares this year, an offer that would increase the exchange’s debt load enough for Moody’s to put the stock on review for a possible downgrade. The London exchange also reiterated that Nasdaq’s offer of £12.43 a share was “wholly inadequate,” and Furse said that she was in talks with other exchanges, but would not specify which.Furse and the London exchange have been under siege since Nasdaq formally initiated its hostile £2.7 billion buyout offer in December.

Furse and the London board have refused to speak with their Nasdaq counterparts and vehemently rebuffed the bid in public, leaving the market wondering whether they were fishing for a higher price — common action in a hostile deal — or running scared.

Neither may be the case. In December, Furse told advisors that her best- case outlook would be to fend off Nasdaq, then use fear of the long arm of U.S. regulation to market the London exchange to new customers, after Euronext and the New York Stock Exchange agreed to pair up this year, according to a person briefed on the talks.

Whether Furse can hold off its hedge fund investors, who are putting pressure on the London exchange to cut a deal with Nasdaq, is unclear. Nasdaq, which already owns 28.8 percent of the London exchange, needs a simple majority, or just over 50 percent, to take control. Short-term investors, including hedge funds and the corporate raider Samuel Heyman, own an estimated 30 percent of the stock and will be instrumental in any deal.

Regulatory creep is a big worry for investors and public company executives as trans-Atlantic alliances create more global markets.

The NYSE chief executive, John Thain, has pledged that U.S. regulators will regulate only within American borders after the merger with Euronext, and that the pan-European exchange will keep its French and Dutch regulators. But many European investors are skeptical.

No matter what Americans say, some argue that the reach of the Sarbanes- Oxley law on corporate governance could create a situation where directors and company executives who list on any exchange allied with an American one are liable to lawsuits or tough U.S. rules that provide for prison sentences.

The London exchange has been a big draw in recent years for emerging-market players, who have been scared off from U.S. markets. Thain has been pressing for changes to Sarbanes-Oxley rules.

IHT: London Stock Exchange to buy back shares to fend off Nasdaq

To win approval for his deal to purchase Euronext, the New York Stock Exchange chief executive, John Thain, said Wednesday in an interview in Paris, that there had been good progress on easing anxiety among companies and banks - the main users of the new exchange - to create a firewall to block the export of American rules to Europe.

Thain also said the U.S. financial markets regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission, had already made clear that corporate governance legislation known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not apply outside the United States.

If the United States passed further laws seen as harmful by Europeans, Euronext would be protected by a foundation controlled by three people and based in the Netherlands.

NYSE’s offer was worth about $10 billion and its value has since climbed along with NYSE’s share price.

International Herald Tribune: NYSE chief woos Europe on exchange deal