The London Stock Exchange will take the final step from old boys' club to public company as Europe's largest bourse when it lists its own shares next Friday.
Built 200 years ago on the site of a boxing saloon, the LSE, now transformed to an electronic exchange from a trading floor, finds itself subject to the UK's strict rules governing a public limited liability company.
Recent exchange history has seen a trail of discarded top officials, blood-letting by brokers, a bruising failed merger and hostile bid attempts.
But the LSE battled back and is now in feistier form as the new, and first female, chief executive, Ms Clara Furse, finds her stride.
Since her appointment in January, the 'Furse Effect' has doubled the price of LSE's off-market traded stock, which hit a new high of £39 sterling ($54.67) on Wednesday, just a pound short of the £40 fair value tag given by its advisers.
Valued at £1.13 billion sterling ($1.6 billion), LSE plc will only be eligible for a spot in the UK's FTSE 250 mid-sized company index. But it boasted Europe's largest total constituent market capitalisation of $2.45 trillion at the end of 2000.
It will be this year's third European bourse to become publicly listed. Frankfurt's Deutsche Boerse was listed in February, and the Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels exchange Euronext last week.
Stockholm Stock Exchange, whose hostile bid for London last year failed, was the world's first bourse to list.