The core business areas within Clearstream experienced further growth in March 2005. The value of assets held in custody on behalf of customers rose to EUR 7.8 trillion, a rise of 2.3 percent from the end of the same month last year (March 2004 EUR 7.6 trillion). The number of international transactions processed by Clearstream rose to 1.78 million for the month representing a rise of 5.3% compared to the same month last year (March
2004: 1.69 million). Of these transactions, 15 percent are registered as stock exchange transactions, 85 percent are Over the Counter (OTC) transactions. For domestic settlement transactions in Germany, the figure stood at 3.09 million in March 2005 representing a decrease of 12.4 percent on the same period last year (March 2004: 3.53 million). The ratio for domestic settlement transactions was 66 percent stock exchange transactions to 34 percent OTC transactions.
Within the Global Securities Financing services business, strong growth continued with the monthly average outstandings reaching EUR 184.5 billion. The combined services include tripartite repo, securities lending and collateral management and collectively experienced a rise of over 50.6 percent from the same month last year (March 2004: EUR 122.5 billion).
Clearstream’s enhanced version of its investment funds service called Vestima+ showed further strong volume increases with the number of investment funds related instructions processed reaching 192,345 in March 2005, a rise of 26.7 percent from the same month last year (March 2004: 151,697). This rise is also reflected across the quarter with Q1 2005 total reaching 535,958. This represents an increase of 27.0 percent above Q1 2004 (421,787).
