OSAKA -- Members of the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Kyoto Stock Exchange on Tuesday held separate extraordinary meetings and approved an agreement to merge the two bourses March 1.
With the formal endorsements of the accord reached last week, the OSE will virtually absorb the Kyoto exchange on March 1.
Kyoto lists 244 firms, all but two of which are also traded on the OSE.
The merger will come a year after the Tokyo Stock Exchange absorbed the Hiroshima Stock Exchange and the Niigata Securities Exchange.
Sluggish trading on smaller markets has spurred the integrations. The combined trading volume on the Kyoto, Hiroshima and Niigata markets was only 0.13 percent of Japan's total in 1999, according to the Financial Services Agency.
Japan, however, still has exchanges in Nagoya, Fukuoka and Sapporo.