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In the short term, consultants say technologists at the LSE and Nasdaq would be secure in their jobs if a merger in the two exchanges were to go ahead. In the long term, it could be a different matter.

“For the first twelve to eighteen months, you’d see relatively few job cuts due to the sheer size and complexity of combining the two exchanges,” says Julie Giera, Vice President IT Management Research at Forrester Research in the US. “We’d anticipate redundancies of around 20% in that period, followed by 40% longer term,” she adds.

Giera says the technology synergies between the two companies would be relatively few, making it difficult for either to cut jobs in the short term: “Although the basic trading applications are the same, the LSE and Nasdaq operate very differently."

It would require a fair amount of customisation just to hand existing legislative considerations. If the merger goes ahead, Giera says most of the cuts are likely to be in technologists working in support areas like payroll and finance systems.

It’s a view shared by David Easthope, a manager at IT consultancy firm Celent in Boston. Long run redundancies would be likely around support and development roles, says Easthope. He says the companies could also benefit from fewer customer interfaces, and potentially from consolidated clearing technologies.