Vote looms on New York Stock Exchange's future

The Big Board parent is seen easily surpassing the 50 per cent of shares-voted threshold at a special meeting on Thursday, according to people familiar with the situation, the first hurdle to sealing a pact reached in February.

A sterner test comes July 13, when the German company must secure 75 per cent of shares outstanding for the deal to progress past the debris of other planned exchange combinations, following an outbreak of industry consolidation that has waxed and waned since last October.

Three planned exchange deals have already collapsed this year, including the competing NYSE proposal led by IntercontinentalExchange and Nasdaq OMX Group, which foundered on US antitrust concerns.

NYSE and Deutsche Boerse have sweetened their own plan with a special dividend that raises the offer terms to roughly $US10.4 billion ($9.7bn), as per the latest share prices, with the German company's investors holding 60 per cent of the enlarged entity.

Executives from both companies have held more than 400 investor meetings to solicit approvals, with the biggest question centred on how European officials will view the marriage of the region's two dominant venues for listed derivatives, Deutsche Boerse's Eurex and NYSE's Liffe.

NYSE chief executive Duncan Niederauer -- who would lead the new company -- and other executives in the past month have travelled to California, London, Chicago and elsewhere to visit more than 100 of its biggest investors, separately travelling to Germany to meet with holders of Deutsche Boerse.