The number of international transactions processed by Clearstream rose to 9.0 million in June 2004, an increase of 9.5 percent year on year (June 2003: 8.2 million). 20 percent of these transactions are registered as stock exchange transactions, 80 percent as Over the Counter (OTC) transactions. The efficiency gains from the introduction of the equity central counterparty in March 2003 continue to affect domestic transactions. As expected, the corresponding number for domestic transactions decreased by 33.3 percent from 26.9 million in 2003 to 18.0 million in 2004 with a ratio of 66 percent stock exchange transactions to 34 percent OTC transactions.
In other business areas, Global Securities Financing services continued to prosper. The outstanding volume in the Triparty products - repo and collateral management - exceeded USD 115 billion in June 2004 which is 66.4 percent higher than the same period last year.
Clearstream's CreationOnline real-time information service continues to grow with the number of customer interactions reaching another new record level of 0.92 million during June, representing an increase of 15.6 percent from the previous month. The number of registered users of CreationOnline increased again last month by over 1,200 to reach a total of 10,560 across 76 countries.
Clearstream's investment funds service showed further volume increases with the number of investment funds related instructions processed reaching over 120,000 in June 2004, a rise of 25.5 percent from the same period last year. In June, Clearstream also announced that its expanded Vestima+ service gained key new customers even ahead if its launch in October this year.
Also in June, Clearstream successfully implemented Phase One of the new automated Daytime Bridge as planned with Euroclear which will improve settlement efficiency of Bridge transactions in general. Customers can now settle a wider range of securities transactions by being able to re-deliver securities from many more local markets across the Bridge during the day and can reduce their financing costs by having more opportunities to settle Bridge transactions that failed during the overnight process. Phase Two is set for November 2004 and will deliver further significant benefits allowing same-day settlement of trades over the Bridge, and in particular, repo and securities financing transactions between ICSD counterparties and will extend Bridge instruction input deadlines and enable customers to repair previously unmatched instructions.
