The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc's global aspirations, hatched during the go-go days of the late-1990s bull market, have finally received their expected death sentence.

Robert Greifeld, the new president and chief executive of the No 2 US stock market, said on Thursday the Nasdaq would pull out of Nasdaq Europe and offload its stake in US single-stock futures exchange NQLX.

He also said the Nasdaq would decide by the end of the year whether to continue its involvement with Nasdaq Deutschland.

This follows its decision last year to pull out of Nasdaq Japan, a trading venture with the Osaka Stock Exchange.

"Greifeld's first initiative should rightly be stopping the cash bleed overseas, because there is just no way to fix it. Nasdaq Europe and Nasdaq Deutschland are hopeless ventures and they should never have been entered into in the first place," said Benn Steil, senior fellow in international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations.

At the time executives embarked on the overseas expansion, retail investors were entering the market in droves and were clamoring for access to after-hours trading and foreign markets.

"Back in the late 1990s, it did seem like it was inevitable that we move to a global 24-hour marketplace," said Robert Hegarty, vice president of securities and investments at research group TowerGroup.

So Nasdaq officials moved aggressively to seize the trend and set up partnerships with exchanges in Asia and Europe.

During 1999 and 2000, the Nasdaq thought its brand name was so powerful "that they would be able to attract listings that would otherwise have gone to the national exchanges just on the basis of the name," Steill said.

But reality turned out to be far different as the stock market turned south, the thrill of trading stocks wore thin and attracting new listings in foreign markets proved more challenging than expected.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq's US business hit stumbling blocks as competition from electronic trading networks heated up, trading volumes declined, and the market downturn slashed the number of listed companies to early-1980s levels.

"I think looking back everybody would have to say that we probably were over aggressive in terms of time frames and plans," Hegarty said of those in the industry who advocated international expansion.