Competitive pressure from an increasingly internationalised market for exchange services forces market participants as well as regulators to adapt and modernise. Thus it comes as no surprise that in Germany too, as elsewhere, ownership, governance and regulation of exchanges have changed rapidly within a surprisingly short period of time over the last few years. Further reforms are already being discussed. However, some structural and regulatory features are surprisingly resistant to change. What we see can therefore be labelled as distinctly ‘path dependent’ progress resulting in a somewhat unfinished agenda.