Per Larsson is an unlikely Viking warrior. There are no horned helmets and battle axes, but the 39-year-old Swede is leading his invasion on the London Stock Exchange with the weapons of the 21st century - tough words, modern technology and cash. Like Nordic raiders before him, he has found his enemy unready.
The City has seen nothing like it. Never before has a hostile bid been launched for a stock exchange anywhere in the world. With his £808 million sterling (€1,053 million) offer, Mr Larsson has thrown the City's old-boy network, which for centuries has run the London exchange like a gentleman's club, into a spin.
While the element of surprise helps in every battle, Mr Larsson's attack had more unexpected features than most. First, OM Gruppen, the Stockholm-based company of which he is chief executive, had barely registered in the minds of the City's highest echelons until news of the bid broke last week. Second, it was a bid by a company set up only 15 years ago for an exchange with a reputation spanning more than two centuries and by far the largest in Europe. Third, the London exchange was in the throes of putting together a merger with its German rival which, albeit unpopular, was about to announce its trump card - a dramatic reduction in the cost of trading across national boundaries.
With one strike, Mr Larsson has put the brakes on the Anglo-German merger, winning praise from disgruntled shareholders in London who had wanted more time to consider the plan. The vote on the merger has been postponed from September 14th and looks unlikely to take place until the end of the year.
Mr Larsson's argument for taking control of the exchange is littered with technical details about liquidity and technology.
He insists the Anglo-German plan to form iX is deeply flawed. For a start, it involves the London exchange throwing away its name.
At the heart of his argument is the battle over liquidity in the market place, the nitty-gritty detail of where deals to buy and trade shares are done.
"We have a view on the future that exchanges will compete about liquidity," he says, rubbishing the idea that exchanges need to merge to achieve that goal.
If iX gets off the ground it will still face competition. The most obvious source is Euronext, the alliance of the Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels exchanges. That might eventually join hands with iX but there are still other players bidding for a place in the emerging market for pan-European share trading - the likes of Easdaq and Tradepoint, for example.
Describing his vision of the future, Mr Larsson says: "London will be very strong in the blue chip shares because of its position as the world financial centre. For large IPOs (initial public offerings of shares) London should be the natural centre.
"Somewhere in between, there will be small, local centres," he says. As smaller companies develop on domestic markets they may migrate towards the bigger market in London. Frankfurt might reasonably ask, however, quite where its hugely successful Neuer Markt fits into the Larsson analysis. Mr Larsson will spend the next three months or so developing the argument in an attempt to win backing for his bid, which is constructed through cash and shares in OM, listed on the Stockholm exchange which it also runs.
His biggest problem may prove to be that the investment banks and stockbroking firms that own the London exchange do not want to swap their shares for OM's. Mr Larsson will also have to counter concerns about the fitness of OM's technology - while highly regarded and used at 20 exchanges around the world - for the challenge of London's market. If nothing else, the bid, even if it fails, will serve to raise the profile of OM, of which Mr Larsson has been chief executive for the past five years.
