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Comment by ape4 | Hacker News Reader

You'd think London (Brexit) and HK (huge demonstrations) would be rather preoccupied now.

Except this doesn't really have anything to do with London or Hong Kong the cities/countries. It's one publicly traded company bidding to take over another. They both just happen to have a city name in their company name.

Well Hong Kong is basically owned and run by real estate billionaires. And it looks like they are doing a little hedging before China tightens some scews. Few weeks back they bought UK's largest pub operator.

And Brexit driven weakness in the pound makes it a great time to invest.

So arguably both the political factors are actually encouraging these moves.

Is there a reason to assume the pound will rebound any time soon?

And 25 years ago they bought Vancouver.

Why wouldn't you when the £ is 15% lower than a year ago. Bargain.

I wonder, would HK owning the LSE make it more or less likely for China to send in the stormtroopers? My first thought was that this was a move to make HK more of an untouchable, international city. But HK billionaires simply investing offshore sounds more likely--presuming they have a direct stake in the exchange.

May be not on the London side but article says "HKEX, whose main shareholder is the Hong Kong government, .... ". With Hong Kong now being part of China, I am not sure if this would have some political implications.

The London Stock Exchange isn't technically in London - it's in the City of London, an exceedingly weird semi-autonomous enclave where corporations can vote in elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

the misinformation that the City somehow lives outside UK law seems to be common on the internet

the City is a glorified borough council with a long complicated history, which has granted it a large bank balance, weird electoral franchise, small police force, and an observer in Parliament

every business in the City follows the same set of laws as those a 10 miles away in Croydon, other than local bylaws (laws on things like littering and dog mess)

The voting thing is important though, as allowing buildings to vote is very different legally to outside the City.

Although it's a valid point, most of the dodgy stuff is now done in a weird off-the-books theoretical location (or downright explicitly in the whole city).

Still interesting the Queen can't go inside without permission.

> The London Stock Exchange isn't technically in London - it's in the City of London, an exceedingly weird semi-autonomous enclave where corporations can vote in elections.

The City of London is part of Greater London and subject to the jurisidiction of the Greater London government. ("Greater London" being the entity that most people are thinking of when they refer to "London"). The London Stock Exchange is in the City of London, which means that it's also in London (Greater London) as well.

The City of London Corporation (note not council) is indeed within Greater London, but still has some weird hangovers from the medieval era, including the Temples and a strange and unique electoral system. It's the Corporation that is the main body administering the region.

It is organised differently to anywhere else in the UK, and distinctly odd. The rest of the UK got rid of those few last remnants of the Middle Ages in the 50s through 70s, though nowhere had kept around as many as the City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Governance

I used to live in the City of London. I was invited to one of their resident's association meetings.

They some senior people in the City of London government was clear that they had to balance the desires of the residents with those of employers/employees. Otherwise residents (<10,000) would have significant sway over employees (>300,000).

Its not some weird dystopian future. It simply makes sense to listen to those who live and work in the City.

You're conflating employers and employees here, but it's employers who get the votes, not employees.

this isn't true, employers are granted the ability to nominate a number of employees based on the number of people they employ in the City

the employer is instructed to allocate such that "voters nominated should reflect the whole diversity of an organisation's employees, including gender, ethnicity and seniority"

the employees nominated can then can vote however they want (secret ballot and all)

the employer itself can't vote

the firms I've worked for in the City handed asked for volunteers each year, and then selected people at random from those volunteers

(and there simply aren't enough upper management per votes allocated to stack the ballot that way)

Preoccupy Wall Street.

I'm sorry. This is neither the place nor the time. I'll clear my desk within 15 minutes.

"Buy when there's blood in the streets"

even when it's your own

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