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Investment Exchanges and Clearing Houses Bill

I beg to move amendment No. 9, in page 4, leave out lines 10 and 11. Again, the amendment deals with a concern flagged up by people in the City. The Bill carves out from its scope overseas investment exchanges. The following scenario has been suggested to me; I do not know whether it is feasible. A UK exchange could be acquired by a company based outside the EU, and the acquirer could then decide that it wanted to close down the UK exchange and encourage members to transfer their listing to an overseas exchange. As a consequence, the provisions in the Bill would no longer apply and the additional regulatory burdens of, say, Sarbanes-Oxley—it could be any other regulation—would affect companies that hitherto had been listed under the UK investment exchange. I am looking for reassurance that an acquirer of a UK exchange cannot compel companies listed on it to move to a US or other non-EU jurisdiction and thus avoid the provisions of the Bill.