But first, I'd like to describe the context in which this merger would take place. There is almost no aspect of the capital markets today that is not undergoing rapid change. Last year, a TSE survey found that about half of Canadians are invested in the markets - twice as many as 11 years earlier. The growth in retail investment has spawned a huge secondary market, which is now responsible for 90 per cent of securities transactions. A nation of savers has become a nation of investors.
Investment is more mobile.
It was a Canadian who first observed that the world was becoming a global village. Now, Canadian investors and companies are becoming increasingly active in the global village marketplace. The Internet is driving that trend at cyberspeed. Investment is more democratic. The most important distinction between a broker and a client used to be that one had information and the other didn't.