In August 2009, the value of assets under custody held on behalf of customers registered an increase for the sixth consecutive month and stood at €10.5 trillion. Primarily due to lower equity market valuations and despite an increase in the new issuance of bonds the assets under custody are still 4 percent lower than in August 2008 (€10.9 trillion). Compared to August 2008, securities held under custody in Clearstream’s international business experienced a rise of 3 percent from €5.3 to €5.5 trillion while domestic German securities held under custody decreased by 10 percent from €5.6 trillion to €5.0 trillion.
For the first time in 2009, in August the total number of settlement transactions increased over the same period last year. This increase is primarily due to a 22 percent rise in international settlement transactions (2.33 million) compared to August 2008 (1.90 million). This figure includes the International Over the Counter (OTC) bond transactions that grew by 23 percent from 0.96 million to 1.18 million in August 2009. Of all international transactions, 71 percent were OTC transactions and 29 percent were registered as stock exchange transactions.
On the German domestic market, settlement transactions reached 5.78 million, 2 percent more than in August 2008 (5.65 million). Of these transactions, 66 percent were stock exchange transactions and 34 percent OTC transactions.
For Global Securities Financing (GSF) services, the monthly average outstandings stood at € 479.8 billion. The combined services, which include triparty repo, securities lending and collateral management, collectively experienced a rise of 22 percent over August 2008 (€ 393.3 billion).
In the Investment Funds services, 317,246 transactions were processed, a 3 percent decrease over August 2008 (326,092) as a result of reduced European investment funds transactions.