Deutsche Borse took another step yesterday towards becoming a global equities marketplace by teaming up with US partners to offer trading in 200 US bluechip stocks.

The exchange aims to attract institutional investors from across Europe to trade the US stocks on its Xetra trading platform, adding to limited business by German retail investors in stocks such as IBM, Microsoft and Boeing.

Deutsche Borse's initiative, with Dow Jones Indexes and investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, will intensify competition with other exchanges that have ambitions to be the hubs of a 24-hour trading environment.

The London Stock Exchange is working to attract more retail investors to trade foreign stocks. Nasdaq is due to introduce Nasdaq Europe, which will trade US and European blue chips, later this month. The New York Stock Exchange has said it will team up with Euronext, although there are no details of their trading plans. Trading platforms such as Instinet are also seeking a share of the market.

The Deutsche Borse move will force its competitors to speed up their plans for winning a greater share of market liquidity. Trading in US stocks on Deutsche Borse will start in September, with liquidity provided by the investment banks.

The initiative will include the provision of options on the 10 most liquid US stocks by Eurex, the derivatives exchange part-owned by Deutsche Borse, and exchange-traded funds.

Mr Volker Potthoff, Deutsche Borse executive board member, admitted that other exchanges were aiming to do similar things.

"We think we can do it better because we are combining the cash and derivatives markets with indexes and clearing," Mr Potthoff said.