Media showing too much enthusiasm for market merger

Former BusinessWeek reporter Gary Weiss notes on his blog that the media is playing too much footsie in its coverage of the New York Stock Exchange-Euronext merger. Combining stock exchanges will not mean a whole lot for individual investors, argues Weiss, contrary to what has been written by many business journalists.

He wrote, “OK. If the company passes on the savings to the ‘average investor,’ who trades maybe three or four times a month, if he’s very busy, that would mean savings of ….. goodness. My calculator can’t quite count that low. He might be able to buy one more ham sandwich a week, maybe?”

Later, he added this: “In summary I am theoretically, maybe, someday, underwhelmed by the whole thing. I sure wish that the media would show a bit less enthusiasm for a merger that is, from an investor standpoint, a total nonevent.”

Read more here. This reminds me of a lot of the non-critical coverage of the big mergers and acquisitions in the late 1990s. And we all know how well most of those, like Time Warner and AOL, turned out.