![Image]( "Cambridge 'to charge maximum fees'")
Cambridge University has announced proposals to charge students the maximum £9,000 in tuition fees from next year, prompting warnings that more institutions will rush to follow suit.
A report by Cambridge's working group on fees argues that it would be "fiscally irresponsible" for the elite institution to charge less than the maximum, adding it expects "most if not all of our peers" to do the same.
The announcement came as a number of Oxford University academics suggested their institution will also need to raise fees to at least £8,000.
Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: "We can now expect a race to the top as universities rush to gain kudos by joining the '£9,000 group' as quickly as possible. How long before the most expensive universities start asking for the freedom to charge even more?"
MPs voted in December to raise tuition fees to £6,000 per year from 2012, with universities allowed to charge £9,000 in exceptional circumstances. But according to the Cambridge report, the working group is recommending a single rate of £9,000 for all home and EU students, regardless of the course or college they study at.
Students from homes with a household income of less than £25,000 will get a reduction of £3,000, plus a bursary of £1,625. This reduction will taper down to zero for students from homes with an income of over £42,000.
The report argues that even with tuition fees set at £9,000, the university is still "carrying the burden of a significant loss per student" and adds: " To charge less than the maximum would be fiscally irresponsible."
At a meeting of Oxford University's Congregation to discuss student funding, Professor Tony Monaco, pro-vice-chancellor (planning and resources) warned: "Because of cuts in Government funding, both for teaching and capital infrastructure, we would have to charge fees of around £8,000 just to maintain the status quo. Anything else would mean we lose money or we have to find, with immediate effect, funds from elsewhere."
Current estimates suggest that fees of £7,600 are needed to replace funding lost through cuts, plus extra to cover capital funding cuts, bringing the total fee level to around £8,000 per student, Prof Monaco said.
Prof Monaco put forward a similar "fee waiver" system for poorer students to that proposed by Cambridge. For example, if fees were set at £9,000, the poorest students could get a £3,000 reduction, taking their fees to £6,000.
Radical plans to reform the healthcare system must be amended to give patients a stronger say over their local services, a group of leading health charities has said.
The eight organisations, which represent millions of patients, called on the Government to make "crucial changes" to the Health and Social Care Bill, "to ensure the NHS will be answerable to everyone it serves".
They described plans to make a network of GP commissioning consortia - which will be responsible for £80 billion of the health service budget - accountable to the public as "weak".
And they said that democratically elected representatives should be used to scrutinise decisions and budget management at a local level.
In a letter to The Times, the charities, which include the Alzheimer's Society, Asthma UK, The British Heart Foundation and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "We support the Government's aim to put patient involvement and democratic accountability at the heart of the health system. However there is a gap between rhetoric and reality.
"The reforms will place £80 billion of the NHS budget into the hands of GPs, but plans to make GP consortia accountable to the public are far too weak. The plans will allow local authorities to replace existing democratically elected overview and scrutiny committees with their own systems."
The letter continued: "Greater patient and public involvement leads to better care and more efficient services yet the proposed reforms do little to give patients a stronger voice at a local level.
"The new local HealthWatch bodies described in the Bill will not have the powers or resources to ensure that patients have a say in their local health services. If they are to serve a meaningful purpose they must be significantly strengthened."
Under the reforms, GPs will take control of commissioning services for patients. Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs), which currently commission services, will be abolished.
So far, 141 GP consortia, serving more than half of the population of England, have now signed up as "pathfinders" to pilot the new arrangements ahead of their planned implementation in 2013.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has arrived in Tunisia to meet the north African country's new interim government just weeks after popular protests unseated former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Mr Hague's visit comes at the start of a three-day trip taking in five countries in north Africa and the Middle East, at a time of continuing street demonstrations challenging the position of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
The Foreign Office imposed a media blackout on the trip until Mr Hague's arrival on security grounds. But the Foreign Secretary blew his own cover by sending a message to Twitter from his iPhone more than six hours before the embargo was due to be lifted.
"Heading to Tunisia to meet the new interim government and show UK support for the people of Tunisia and their democratic hopes," Mr Hague told his 30,055 followers on the micro-blogging website as he set off from the UK last night.
The Foreign Office declined to name the other four countries on Mr Hague's itinerary.
Mr Ben Ali resigned and fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia on January 14 after weeks of protests against his 23-year rule.
His departure sparked a wave of instability across the Arab world, most notably in Egypt, where tens of thousands of protesters have occupied Tahrir Square to demand the removal of Mr Mubarak. Demonstrations have also been seen in Jordan, where King Abdullah II dismissed his government, and in Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would not stand for re-election.
The Foreign Office described the current period as "a time of great opportunity in the region" and said Mr Hague's discussions would focus on "calls for greater political openness and economic development in the Middle East in the light of recent events in Tunisia and Egypt".
In Tunisia, the Foreign Secretary is due to meet leading figures from the interim government including Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi and International Co-operation Minister Mohamed Nouri Jouini.
The interim government has promised to hold fresh elections within six months and Mr Ghannouchi - who served for many years in the ousted president's regime - has said he will retire from politics once they are complete.
A plan to re-use energy generated by a crematorium incinerator to heat a public swimming pool has been given the go-ahead by councillors.
Members of Redditch Borough Council hope the scheme to divert heat from waste gases from the crematorium into a nearby leisure centre will save the authority more than £14,000 a year.
Work on the link between the Worcestershire town's crematorium and the nearby Abbey Leisure Centre, which is being redeveloped, will now begin in the summer.
Welcoming the full council's decision, the local authority's leader Carole Gandy acknowledged that the cremation process was a sensitive matter, but stressed that the proposals had widespread support.
The councillor said: "I am pleased to say that since news of the proposals broke and following consultation we undertook in Redditch, about 80 to 90% of the responses received by email, letter, phone calls and messages posted online, have been in favour of the idea.
"Many respondents have in fact praised the council for being so innovative and for being willing to discuss the idea openly."
She added: "Throughout we have been careful to explain how the technology would work, that it is tried and trusted, and that the practice is quite common in parts of Europe and especially in Sweden.
"We already support our residents to insulate their homes and be energy efficient, so it seemed only right for us to explore this re-use of energy, on top of introducing solar panels and electric vehicles and other climate change measures we are currently putting into practice."
The scheme has previously been criticised by the Unison trade union, which described the Conservative-run council's cost-saving proposals as "insulting and insensitive".
The Government has halted a £6 billion procurement programme for search and rescue helicopters, after the preferred bidder admitted it had had access to commercially sensitive information.
Ministry of Defence police are now investigating how the information came to be in the possession of CHC Helicopter, a member of the Soteria consortium.
The deal was supposed to replace the RAF's Sea King fleet, but Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said in a statement to Parliament, also released to the London Stock Exchange: "The Government has sufficient information to enable it to conclude that the irregularities that have been identified were such that that it would not be appropriate to proceed with either the preferred bid or with the current procurement process."
The statement continued: "The Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence will now consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer term arrangements can be put in place."
A website affiliated with Chechen rebels has released a video in which insurgent leader Doku Umarov claims responsibility for last month's deadly suicide bombing at Russia's largest airport and threatens more bloodshed if Russia does not leave the region.
The Kavkaz Centre website said it received the video late on Monday. It was not clear when or where the video was recorded.
The January 24 attack at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport killed 36 people.
Russian investigators said the bomber was a 20-year-old man from the Caucasus region that includes Chechnya, but have not released his name or other details.
"You see this special operation carried out by my order ... more special operations will be carried out in the future," Umarov says in the video, wearing a camouflage uniform and a skullcap.
"Among us there are hundreds of brothers who are prepared to sacrifice themselves" in further attacks, Umarov says in the video. "We can at any time carry out operations where we want."
Over the weekend, the website released another video in which Umarov also threatened more attacks, saying 2011 would be "the year of blood and tears".
Chechen rebels have fought two full-scale wars against Russian forces since 1994. Major offensives in the second war died down about a decade ago, but the insurgency has continued with small clashes in Chechnya and in neighbouring Caucasus republics.
The rebels have claimed responsibility for an array of terrorist attacks, including last year's double suicide bombing of the Moscow subway system that killed 40 people.
Umarov, who seeks to create a Caucasus emirate independent from Russia and governed by Sharia law, said in the earlier video that he could call on 50 to 60 suicide bombers if necessary.
The Swedish lawyer representing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said his client faces one of the "weakest" cases he has ever seen in his career.
Stockholm-based Bjorn Hurtig, 45, said contradictory messages posted on Twitter and a blog suggest the two alleged victims may have a "hidden agenda".
The lawyer added that it was "outrageous" for a prosecutor to publicly confirm the 39-year-old Australian was under investigation for rape.
In a statement submitted to London's Belmarsh Magistrates' Court ahead of the hearing on Tuesday, Mr Hurtig attacked Assange's treatment at the hands of the Swedish authorities.
He said: "In my opinion, having studied the case file, as well as other material I was permitted to inspect but not to take copies or notes of (SMS/text messages from the complainants' mobile telephones) the case is one of the weakest I have ever seen in my professional career.
"Even leaving to one side evidential problems, I can see from the SMS/text messages, in which the complainants speak of 'revenge', obtaining money and speaking about Mr Assange in the press, that they may have a hidden agenda, which casts serious doubt on their accusations and their trustworthiness."
Assange faces three charges of sexually assaulting one woman and one charge of raping another during a week-long visit to Stockholm last August.
He arrived at the south east London courthouse on Tuesday for the second and final day of a hearing to decide whether he should be extradited to face prosecution.
Court officials said District Judge Howard Riddle, who transferred the case from Westminster because of the massive press interest, is likely to reserve his decision to another date.
Assange's legal team fear a move to Sweden could lead to him being taken against his will to the United States, detained at Guantanamo Bay and ultimately executed for spying.
Diets high in fats, sugars and processed foods are lowering toddlers' IQs, a new study has suggested.
It found eating habits among three-year-olds shape brain performance as they get older.
A predominantly processed food diet at the age of three is directly associated with a lower IQ at the age of eight and a half, according to a Bristol-based study of thousands of British children.
Food packed with vitamins and nutrients notably did the opposite, helping boost mental performance as youngsters got older, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reports.
Researchers said toddlers' diets could change IQ levels later in childhood, even if eating habits improve with age.
"This suggests that any cognitive/behavioural effects relating to eating habits in early childhood may well persist into later childhood, despite any subsequent changes to dietary intake," the authors wrote.
The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is tracking the long-term health and well-being of around 14,000 children.
Parents completed questionnaires detailing the types and frequency of the food and drink their children consumed when they were three, four, seven and eight-and-a-half years old.
Every one-point increase in the study's dietary pattern score - a record of processed fat intake - was associated with a 1.67 fall in IQ.
The brain grows at its fastest rate during the first three years of life. "It is possible that good nutrition during this period may encourage optimal brain growth," the report added.
Britain's bank tax has been increased by an extra £800 million to raise £2.5 billion this year and will be made permanent to ensure banks make a "fair contribution", the Chancellor has said.
George Osborne announced he was scrapping a lower introductory rate originally planned for 2011 as the banking sector is returning to health faster than expected.
He said he wanted to make sure "banks make a fair contribution to closing the deficit".
Mr Osborne denied the move was politically motivated, but it comes as so-called Project Merlin talks with banks to rein in bonuses and increase business lending reach a crunch point.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Osborne admitted he had not yet reached agreement on limiting bankers' bonuses and said he hoped making the tax position plain would aid the prospects of a deal.
He said: "What really matters is if we get a measurable and significant increase in lending to small and medium-sized businesses. That's what people will want to look at when we conclude a deal, if we conclude a deal. It's very important to get all the components in place. Today's announcement clears the way so now banks know where they are on taxation."
He added: "I'm still confident we can secure a deal with the banks on seeing an increase in lending to small businesses and see that bonuses are lower this year than last year," he said.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: "After all George Osborne's tough talk on the banks in recent weeks and months, this morning's hurried and panicky announcement is a damp squib."
The Treasury had planned to phase the levy in, with banks paying a lower introductory rate on their balance sheets since the start of the year.
But the tax - introduced on January 1 - will be increased in March and April to offset this before settling at 0.075% a month. It will raise the full £2.5 billion target in 2011 and 2012 before rising to £2.6 billion for the following years.
A plan has been launched to resurrect the Olympic Stadium wrap, a 900m (984-yard) hi-tech fabric curtain surrounding the showpiece venue.
London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton has opened up the bidding for a private sponsor to supply the wrap, which was controversially scrapped to save £7 million after the Government's spending review in October.
Companies who lodge expressions of interest by the February 18 deadline will be in line for sector exclusive marketing rights as part of the procurement.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines do not allow branding in venues, so the wrap will not display sponsor logos during the Games, but the offer to reinstate the wrap is also a high-profile deal.
More than four billion people worldwide are set to see the 80,000-seat venue when they tune in for the opening and closing ceremonies plus the athletics competitions.
Mr Deighton said: "We have had significant interest in supplying the stadium wrap from the private sector so now is the time to start a formal tender process.
"There are some exciting ideas around and we are running a process that is fair to those organisations that have expressed an interest."
London 2012 has raised £670 million of a £700 million domestic sponsorship target. It must raise £2 billion from the private sector to stage the Games.
It is billing the wrap deal as one of the last high-profile opportunities for a corporate sponsor to link-up with the £9.3 billion Olympic project.
Information on the tender is available on CompeteFor - London 2012's business opportunities website.
Cambridge University has announced proposals to charge students the maximum £9,000 in tuition fees from next year, prompting warnings that more institutions will rush to follow suit.
A report by Cambridge's working group on fees argues that it would be "fiscally irresponsible" for the elite institution to charge less than the maximum, adding it expects "most if not all of our peers" to do the same.
The announcement came as a number of Oxford University academics suggested their institution will also need to raise fees to at least £8,000.
Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: "We can now expect a race to the top as universities rush to gain kudos by joining the '£9,000 group' as quickly as possible. How long before the most expensive universities start asking for the freedom to charge even more?"
MPs voted in December to raise tuition fees to £6,000 per year from 2012, with universities allowed to charge £9,000 in exceptional circumstances. But according to the Cambridge report, the working group is recommending a single rate of £9,000 for all home and EU students, regardless of the course or college they study at.
Students from homes with a household income of less than £25,000 will get a reduction of £3,000, plus a bursary of £1,625. This reduction will taper down to zero for students from homes with an income of over £42,000.
The report argues that even with tuition fees set at £9,000, the university is still "carrying the burden of a significant loss per student" and adds: " To charge less than the maximum would be fiscally irresponsible."
At a meeting of Oxford University's Congregation to discuss student funding, Professor Tony Monaco, pro-vice-chancellor (planning and resources) warned: "Because of cuts in Government funding, both for teaching and capital infrastructure, we would have to charge fees of around £8,000 just to maintain the status quo. Anything else would mean we lose money or we have to find, with immediate effect, funds from elsewhere."
Current estimates suggest that fees of £7,600 are needed to replace funding lost through cuts, plus extra to cover capital funding cuts, bringing the total fee level to around £8,000 per student, Prof Monaco said.
Prof Monaco put forward a similar "fee waiver" system for poorer students to that proposed by Cambridge. For example, if fees were set at £9,000, the poorest students could get a £3,000 reduction, taking their fees to £6,000.
Lord Prescott is to battle on after a judge refused him permission to mount a High Court challenge over the Metropolitan Police's handling of the News of the World phone-hacking case.
Mr Justice Mitting ruled the legal challenge "unarguable" after considering the issues in private.
The judge rejected applications to seek judicial review by the former deputy prime minister and three other applicants.
Labour MP Chris Bryant, former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick and journalist Brendan Montague also claim there were human rights breaches in the police handling of their cases.
The bid by all four to seek judicial review is now expected to come before a judge in open court.
Tamsin Allen, head of media and information law at Bindmans LLP, said: "This is not the final decision. We think the judge, who considered the case on the papers in private, is plainly wrong and the application for permission will be renewed at an open court hearing."
The legal challenge was triggered by a Metropolitan Police refusal to provide the four with all the information relevant to them which was found during a search of the office of jailed private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Lord Prescott wants the courts to declare that the Met violated his rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to inform him that his details had been obtained by hacking, and failing to respond to direct requests for information contained in documents held by the police.
He says: "These documents had been in the Metropolitan Police's possession since their investigation in 2005/2006 but I was never notified of them or that I was a person of interest to Mulcaire. I only discovered I might have been after the Guardian published its original investigation on July 8 2009."
He also wants a declaration that there was a further human rights violation because the police failed to carry out an effective investigation into the unlawful phone-hacking activities of Mulcaire and others, including former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, who was jailed after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages.
Protesters against high petrol prices have taken their campaign to Whitehall, urging the Government to abandon its planned fuel duty increase.
Led by TV presenter Quentin Willson, a delegation from the FairFuelUK campaign lobbied the Treasury and handed in a letter addressed to Chancellor George Osborne.
The letter urged him to abandon a planned April fuel duty increase of 1p a litre and to announce measures to bring down and stabilise the cost of fuel.
Mr Osborne later dropped a heavy hint in the Commons that he may introduce action to ease the burden on motorists, telling MPs there would "potentially" be announcements on the situation in next month's Budget.
The FairFuelUK campaign is backed by the Road Haulage Association (RHA), the Freight Transport Association (FTA), the Fuel Card Company and the RAC as well as other businesses, trade bodies and members of the motoring public.
After the protest, campaign organiser Peter Carroll said: "The whole nation has to get behind this campaign to help boost the economy, which is being hurt by high fuel prices. Scrapping the planned April fuel duty rise is a start, but we need a long-term solution."
Theo de Pencier of the FTA said: "It is within the Government's gift to loosen the noose from around the industry's neck but this will only happen if we all come together and make our voices heard."
Friends of the Earth's transport campaigner, Richard Dyer, said: "Motorists are paying the price for the failure of successive governments to wean our transport system off its addiction to oil."
RAC motoring strategist Adrian Tink said: "For many of Britain's 34 million drivers, travelling by car is not a choice - it is a necessity. That fact needs realising and it needs acting upon."
While at the Treasury, the delegation unfurled a banner showing a picture of a fuel tanker set out as a graphic which indicated just how much of the price of petrol and diesel is made up of Government fuel duty.
The 7/7 rescue operation was hampered by problems that were identified but not tackled after the King's Cross fire 18 years earlier, an inquest has heard.
Some of the recommendations in Sir Desmond Fennell's report into the 1987 tragedy have still not been implemented nearly six years after the 2005 terrorist attacks, the hearing was told.
In particular, the radio system used by London Underground staff remains not fully compatible with that used by the emergency services.
Sir Desmond's report into the November 18 1987 fire at King's Cross Underground station, which killed 31 people, highlighted serious concerns about communications on the Tube.
The inquest into the July 7 2005 attacks on London has heard that radio problems meant rescuers battling to save lives on bombed Underground trains could not pass information and requests for more help back to the surface.
Hugo Keith QC, counsel to the inquest, noted: "Some of the things that went wrong on 7/7 were direct reflections of issues identified by Fennell which had not been corrected or addressed fully by the time of July 7."
Geoff Dunmore, London Underground's operational security manager, admitted that relaying information from the Tube trains made the emergency response to the attacks more difficult. "The root causes of a lot of the problems was the fact that we couldn't get communication directly from the trains to the outside world, including our own controls," he said.
He said the introduction of a new radio system for London Underground staff, known as Connect, since the 2005 bombings, had addressed this issue.
"Of course with these type of incidents you can never guarantee that a communications system will stand up totally but it is a lot more resilient than anything we've had previously," he said.
Mr Dunmore also insisted that London Underground learned lessons from the King's Cross fire before the July 7 attacks, adding: "If you consider for a moment the overall response to July 7, a lot of what we had in place in terms of emergency planning and training and things like rendezvous points is a direct outcome of Fennell."
Plans to privatise the UK's search and rescue helicopter service have been put on hold after a police investigation was launched into alleged irregularities in the bidding process.
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond announced that the £6 billion procurement programme to replace the RAF's Sea King fleet was being halted because the preferred bidder has admitted it had access to commercially sensitive information.
Ministry of Defence police are now investigating how the information came to be in the possession of CHC Helicopter, a member of the Soteria consortium.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said that the debacle raised questions over the movement of staff between the MoD and private companies.
"What it will raise once again is the nature of the relationship of the people who work for the MoD and commercial organisations," Sir Menzies told BBC Radio Scotland.
Under the privatisation plans, Soteria would have provided US Sikorsky helicopters to fly search and rescue missions from 12 bases around the UK currently operated by the Royal Navy, RAF and coastguards.
The scheme sparked controversy, with Prince William - who has been serving as a Sea King pilot at RAF Valley on Anglesey - understood to have voiced his concern to Prime Minister David Cameron when they met in Zurich as part of England's 2018 World Cup bid in December.
Ministers are now considering the potential options for maintaining cover until new longer term arrangements can be put in place, with speculation that they may go for an upgrade of serving Sea Kings.
Maritime and Coastguard Agency chief executive Vice-Admiral Sir Alan Massey said the development would have no immediate impact on the service, though he expressed concern about future rescue capabilities.
"I am completely satisfied with the service our search and rescue helicopters provide at the moment," he told MPs on the Commons Transport Committee. "I have no concerns today. If you ask me how things are going to be in 2016 it might be different."
The killer of a 26-year-old woman whose murder was linked to the Yorkshire Ripper has finally been revealed more than 35 years later.
Fresh DNA evidence from the crime scene has led detectives to firmly believe that Christopher Smith bludgeoned to death Preston mother-of-two Joan Harrison.
Serial offender Smith, 60, from Leeds, died in 2008 but the Crown Prosecution Service said police had gathered sufficient evidence to charge him with murder if he was still alive.
A three-page note by Smith - penned the day before he died from a terminal illness - in which he seemingly admitted the murder was also found at his home which stated "I can't go on with the guilt", police said.
Mrs Harrison's battered body was found in a disused lock-up garage in Berwick Road, Avenham, in November 1975. A bite mark was found on her breast and several items of jewellery were missing including two gold wedding rings belonging to the twice-married victim.
Two nights earlier she had left her home in Deepdale to head for a drink in Preston centre. It is understood Smith did not know his victim and may have come across her by chance after being released from a prison sentence he had served in the area.
The connection with Peter Sutcliffe came to light in 1978 - when the serial killer was still at large - as West Yorkshire Police received the first of three letters purporting to be from the Ripper.
Signed "Jack the Ripper", it began: "I am sorry I cannot give my name for obvious reasons.. I am the Ripper" and later added: "Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston 75, get about a bit you know."
Following Sutcliffe's capture and confession, those messages were proved to be from hoaxer John Humble, known as Wearside Jack. In 1981 Sutcliffe, from Bradford, was jailed for life for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more, while Humble, from Sunderland, was jailed for eight years in 2006 for perverting the course of justice.
Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Gardner, head of crime for Lancashire Constabulary, said: "This has been a long-running and complex homicide inquiry for the Constabulary. Joan lost her life in a most brutal way and despite the enormous efforts of all those originally involved, no charges were ever brought."
The London Stock Exchange is in advanced talks over a potential merger with Canadian bourse TMX, it has been confirmed.
A statement from the LSE said the possible tie-up would create "an international exchange leader" with headquarters in both London and Toronto.
The merger - which could be announced as early as this week - would see the creation of a group valued at around £5.5 billion, making it one of the world's largest exchanges.
The expected merger follows a strategic partnership entered into by the LSE and TMX in 2009.
It has been reported that LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet would become chief executive of the new group, with his opposite number at TMX, Thomas Kloet, taking on the role of chairman.
In a statement, the LSE said tonight that it was in "advanced discussions with TMX Group Inc regarding a possible merger of equals to create an international exchange leader".
It added: "Current discussions contemplate an exchange ratio close to the current market capitalisation of London Stock Exchange Group Plc and TMX Group Inc.
"It is currently contemplated that the executive management and senior leadership of the merged group will be drawn from a balance of leaders from both organisations.
"The merged group would be co-headquartered in London and Toronto and continue to be overseen by its existing regulatory authorities."
The potential merger comes at a time of consolidation among the world's bourses. In January, the Singaporean and Australian stock exchanges announced plans to merge.
