The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Duncan Niederauer about the merger between NYSE and Euronext. Here is a piece of that interview:

WSJ: How is the integration with Euronext working? The last quarterly call sounded a little rocky.

Mr. Niederauer: That was a wake-up call. We are now working very hard, and I hope to say something about what we are doing by the time we announce first-quarter earnings [on May 6]. The first six or eight months of the merger, not a lot of work was done on integration. It’s very easy to romanticize about all the wonderful things you can do together. Trimming head count is not what anybody gets out of bed excited to do. Yet that’s a part of making a merger.

WSJ: Why wasn’t integration a bigger priority from the start?

Mr. Niederauer: Everyone was getting to know each other. Larry [Leibowitz, the NYSE’s head of U.S. markets and global technology] didn’t get here until July. Larry could come in with no predispositions. I honestly don’t believe we made a lot of progress on that until we had an independent arbiter to say: “Let’s just make the right decision. Let’s not worry about whose feelings get hurt or what business you built.”

NYX still looks like a great buy from a valuation standpoint…

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