Vienna - The Vienna stock exchange announced Tuesday it had received Czech regulatory approval for the takeover of the Prague stock exchange, boosting its control of bourses in Central and Eastern Europe to three.

Besides acquiring 92.4 per cent of the Prague bourse in November, the Vienna exchange in June bought an 81.01 per cent of Slovenia's bourse in Ljubljana and raised its stake in the Prague bourse to 37.7 per cent.

"This means that we can quickly start implementing our measures to strengthen the Czech capital market further," said Michael Buhl, chief executive of the Vienna bourse, commenting on the news that the Czech national bank had green-lighted the deal.

Like other exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe, Vienna and Prague were hit by the global financial downturn, as investors considered markets exposed to business in the region as too risky.

Since the end of 2007, the Vienna bourse's market capitalization has fallen from 157.9 billion euros (202.6 billion dollars) to 69 billion euros as of last Friday.

At the same time, the value of shares traded in Prague was nearly halved, from 1.84 trillion koruny (101.8 billion dollars) to 1.09 trillion koruny as of Monday.

The two bourses have not released the price paid for the takeover, but Czech media estimated the value of the Prague exchange at between 200 and 400 million euros. (dpa)