Early closing for Deutsche Boerse?

Frankfurt's stock market is considering scrapping its late opening hours, in a move that would please big financial institutions but upset individual investors.

The Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt currently keeps trading till 8pm (1800 GMT), the latest and longest trading hours in Europe.

The extension was introduced three years ago at the height of the dot.com boom to let investors respond better to what was happening on Wall Street.

But with the boom well and truly over, traders say the institutions give up and go home after 5.30pm, leaving the market barely ticking over from the trading of retail investors.

And the big firms are no longer prepared to pay the extra personnel and transaction costs the late opening entails.

"The Frankfurt securities exchange is seriously considering to shorten trading hours," a spokeswoman for Deutsche Boerse told Reuters.

Closing the doors at 5.30pm would bring the market into line with London, Paris and Milan, all of whom have shut up shop by then.

The pressure to follow suit, the spokeswoman said, came mainly from foreign institutions which trade on the Frankfurt exchange.