Small- and medium-sized stock exchanges will be forced to give up their hold on liquidity in national stocks within the next few years, according to Antoinette Hunziker-Ebneter, chief executive of Virt-x, the pan-European blue-chip exchange.

Speaking at a lunch organised by Financial News and the Securities Institute last week, she said: 'Within the next few years we will end up with just two or three competing pools of liquidity in Europe. By then, blue chips will be traded on a pan-European level, which will involve a significant change for the trading of mid-cap stocks. Some exchanges will find that they cannot afford to support the cost of running their systems just to handle small volumes of local trading and mid-caps.'