Any cross-border alliances involving Asian exchanges, many of which are still licking their wounds from the region's economic crisis, may come slowly and in small doses.

"I don't see any emerging trend of (stock exchanges) forging major alliances in Asia. I think we are rather seeing a trend toward intensified competition," said Shunta Yamato, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo.

"Even if the Asian crisis ends, each nation regards a securities market as an important venue to get US dollars, so they will focus on building up financial centres on their own...I don't see any consolidation for now," he said.

The launch of European economic and monetary union (EMU) in January 1999 has triggered a flurry of alliances in Europe, including the Euro Alliance grouping exchangesin Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich, but a variety of economic and legal structures would make it difficult for exchanges in Asia to follow suit.

"I think there is a possibility of European-type alliances in Asia, although such moves may not come anytime soon," said Eisuke Nagatomo, head of the international affairs department of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), Japan's leading exchange.

"You need to wait till the next century," he said.Top Asian exchanges like the TSE and the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) are expanding cross-border links on derivatives with non-Asian partners in an effort to gain greater international market access and boost transactions.

The TSE, already allied with the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) and SIMEX in the trade of Japanese government bond (JGB) futures, is set to link up with the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) later this year for the relaunch of JGB contracts on the CBOT.

SIMEX, the most active exchange in Asia inalliances on derivatives trading, moved last year to join forces with Germany's Deutsche Terminboerse (DTB) to trade Bund and Bobl futures and options and Schatz futures.