PARIS (AP) – NYSE Euronext shares slipped in their first day of trading Wednesday following the completion of the $14 billion deal that created the first trans-Atlantic stock exchange. Executives were already talking about making the company even bigger.

The deal combined the owner of the New York Stock Exchange with European exchange operator Euronext NV. Shares of the new company fell 1.7 percent to $99.13 in afternoon trading on the Paris exchange. Its shares in the U.S. fell $1.68 to $99.32 in the first hour of trading.

The creation of NYSE Euronext, the world’s biggest stock exchange, signals a new era in global consolidation of financial markets, with its stock traded continuously for 13 hours a day on two continents.

At ceremonies in Paris’ historic bourse, blue confetti rained down on executives after the initial share price flashed on a screen.

Soon afterward, executives boarded a flight for New York, where they were to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Executives said the priority for now is to integrate the newly merged companies, though they remain open to a deal with Frankfurt’s Deutsche Boerse AG, and to cooperation with other exchanges in Europe and Asia.

An offer to incorporate Deutsche Boerse AG’s cash equities business “is still open, but it’s up to them also to react,” Euronext Chairman Jan-Michiel Hessels said.

Deutsche Boerse failed in its bid to acquire Euronext last year. A spokesman for the Frankfurt exchange said the company had no immediate comment on Hessels’ remark.

Hessels, who came to the combined group as Euronext’s chairman, also said that while further consolidation among European exchanges made sense, NYSE Euronext had not yet been actively approached by other European bourses.

“I think they were all waiting until we first closed our transaction and got into an operation mode together,” he said.

NYSE Euronext already has inroads in Asia, where it has an expanded partnership with the Tokyo Stock Exchange and owns a stake in India’s National Stock Market.

John Thain, chief executive of the new group, said the company hoped to build on its strategic alliance with Tokyo even before the Japanese exchange reaches its goal of going public by 2009.

“That’s the time frame that really they are operating on, but really we would hope to further our relations with them between then and now,” said Thain, who is credited as transforming the 219-year-old NYSE through expansion and the addition of electronic trading.

The Euronext deal, announced last May, was overwhelmingly approved by shareholders in December and sailed past European regulators with relatively few problems. Euronext encompasses stock markets with headquarters in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Lisbon, as well as the London derivatives market LIFFE.

It gives the NYSE a competitive advantage over rival Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., which failed in its hostile attempt to buy the London Stock Exchange.

NYSE expects to create cost savings of $375 million, with some $250 million of that from integrating their technology platforms. The NYSE last year rolled out a hybrid trading system that combines floor specialists with electronic trading; Euronext has no floor traders.

The combined company will trade under the symbol NYX in both Paris and New York.

AP-ES-04-04-07 1014EDT