The Paris Bourse's race against time.

THE PARIS BOURSE'S RACE AGAINST TIME

The Paris Bourse, like the London Stock Exchange, is protected by a thick crust of ancient habits and customs. But it's hurrying to modernize itself before the competition from London-based firms grows too fierce. For the first time, it's planning to introduce continuous trading in listed stocks and bonds, it's eroding the privileges of the profitable but under-capitalized agents de change (brokers), it's importing new technology, it's unfixing commissions, and it's opening up trading and market-making to banks, which have until now been excluded from buying and selling securities.

To the outsider, securities trading in Paris has always been an enigma. The senior partners of a sheltered group of agents de change meet at the bourse from 12.30 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. every day, test their expensive elbows on the velvet-coated bar of the Corbeille (the central ring on the floor of the bourse), and set prices according to the supply and demand of the moment. It's an open outcry, an auction. The agents arrive with firm orders (they're not interested in bids and offers, in enquiries), and a market official moves the price of the listed securities (on a blackboard, with a piece of chalk) until there are no more outstanding orders to be matched.