The London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse set up an EU referendum committee

Germany's Deutsche Boerse and the London Stock Exchange are in merger talks - 15 years after the two groups first tried to make a "potential merger of equals of the two businesses."

Earlier this week, the LSE said in a statement that the potential merger "would represent a compelling opportunity for both companies to strengthen each other in an industry-defining combination, creating a leading European-based global markets infrastructure group."

However, there is potentially one huge obstacle standing in the way of the merger, again - a Brexit.

On June 23, Britons get to vote on whether Britain should stay or leave the European Union in a referendum. Currently, the polls show an incredibly close vote - all latest polls show that only a few percentage differences is between the stay and leave camps.

A leave vote could be potentially destroy the merger because one of the big groups is based in Germany and the other in Britain. Considering nobody knows what the final arrangements or true economic fallout would be if Britain left the EU, it is difficult to know how this would affect the proposed deal.

And this is why the LSE and Deutsche Boerse created a committee to look into this. Here is the excerpt from the full statement (emphasis ours):

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