The news made my jaw drop a bit: “Toyota Motor Corp. lost 765.8 billion yen ($7.74 billion) in its fiscal fourth quarter, leading the world’s largest auto maker by car sales to its first full-year loss in 59 years and setting the stage for even worse results in the current fiscal year.” (from the Wall Street Journal) The first full-year loss in 59 years! That’s astounding… It seems like the auto industry doesn’t quite know which end is up… General Motors (GM:NYSE) just posted a $6 billion loss in its first quarter, but is seeing some interest in the potential sale of its Opel division from some European buyers - including Fiat SpA (F:Milan), who has already entered a deal with Chrysler, and has said it would be interested in GM’s Latin America, Russia and China operations. Porsche (PAH3:XETRA) and Volkwagon (VOW:XETRA) are going to merge… Russia’s OAO GAZ Group (GAZA:Russia) is selling its LDV brand (a U.K. van maker) to Malaysian-based Weststar - and also showed interest in GM’s Opel division. And Ford (F:NYSE) wants to convert one of its SUV manufacturing plants to an electric vehicle production line. It’s like a giant game of 52-card pick up, where the cards raining down magically turn into cash… GM gets leaner, losses debt and gains potential government investments… European car makers find synergy and savings in merged operations… And everyone goes home happy, right? Only when people start buying cars again.

Consolidation comes in many forms… Buying up assets or operations, buying stakes in operations or companies, merging operations, takeovers, the list goes on and on.

But one thing that has started gaining interest in the mainstream media is exchange consolidation.

Remember last summer when the Chicago Merchantile Exchange bought the Chicago Board of Trade? Or when the Group decided to by Nymex the following March for $11 billion? Or when NYSE Euronext bid for AMEX? When Nasdaq wanted to buy London and the OMX?

These merging markets offer considerable cost savings, a uniform platform, and an ease of cross-transactions that could ultimately create a “flat world” of international trading.

This behavior is starting to trickle into emerging markets as regional stock exchanges gain market capitalization and foreign interest. For example, Wiener Börse, operator of the Vienna stock market, just announced that it would buy the majority stake in the Prague Stock Exchange.

The deal is worth about $264 million, and Wiener Börse beat out other regional rivals, like Deutsche Boerse and the OMX Nordic Exchange. The Warsaw Exchange, Wiener Börse’s main competitor, was kept out of the bidding process because it’s a state-owned business.

But this isn’t the first market Vienna’s gotten its paws on…

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