NYSE chief travels globe for foreign listings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - NYSE Euronext Inc's (NYX.N) chief executive Duncan Niederauer is stepping up efforts to lure more foreign companies to list on the exchange and sign partnership deals with Asian exchanges.

At the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit in New York, Neiderauer said that U.S. equities has become so competitive, NYSE Euronext has little choice but to look for new markets abroad.

In the past month alone, Niederauer has visited India, Malaysia, Japan and the Philippines to meet with exchanges and government officials and seal technology partnerships.

And later this month, he is traveling to Ukraine and Russia to urge them not to assume "the London Stock Exchange is the only choice for overseas listing."

With a slow domestic market for initial public offerings and rival NASDAQ-OMX (NDAQ.O) trying to lure away listings, NYSE-Euronext has taken the battle for listings abroad. Niederauer

said he is finding a receptive audience.

"In terms of listing prowess, there's no question how our brand stacks up," he said, adding that he believes many foreign companies wanted to listed with NYSE's global brand above all.

In China, where NYSE Euronext is focusing primarily on attracting listings, it is advising some of its U.S. companies on how to list on the Shanghai exchange. Niederauer said NYSE Euronext itself would consider listing there, too.

One of the major challenges he faces is the perception overseas that Sarbanes-Oxley, the much reviled financial reporting requirements in the U.S. for public companies, is onerous. "Their first choice is to list with us," he said, but "there is a feeling that the U.S. is a scary place to list."

He said he would focus on helping foreign companies understand the U.S. regulatory system. And part of his sales pitch is that global companies that happen to be Chinese should to list in the U.S. because of its enormous capital markets.

His international expansion efforts will exclude other acquisitions for now. In addition to last year's Euronext merger, where he said there is still progress to be made toward integration, NYSE bought American Stock Exchange and Wombat Software earlier this year. So Niederauer prefers to "put the pieces together of what we've assembled."

"I don't think our acquisitions are completely integrated in our company yet," he said.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba, editing by Phil Berlowitz)