The number of international transactions processed by Clearstream rose to 7.7 million in May 2004, an increase of 13.4 percent year on year (May 2003: 6.8 million). 19 percent of these transactions are registered as stock exchange transactions, 81 percent as Over the Counter (OTC) transactions. However as expected, the corresponding number for domestic transactions decreased by 34.9 percent from 24.1 million in 2003 to 15.7 million in 2004 due to the launch of the equity central counterparty in March 2003, with a ratio of 67 percent stock exchange transactions to 33 percent OTC transactions. While market conditions have improved, the volume growth is due to implemented enhancements across the whole spectrum of service areas particularly taxes, corporate actions, new issues and settlement.
In the business area of Global Securities Financing, Clearstream once again maintained global leadership in international fixed income Tri-party Securities Financing in the third annual survey by Global Custodian magazine. Cleastream was voted top performer in the key categories of Product Development, Collateral Optimisation, Operational Efficiency and Reporting. Clearstream’s Global Securities Financing business experienced strong growth rates in May and for the first time Triparty Repo daily outstandings surpassed the USD 100 billion milestone. Average outstandings for May 2004 are now 58.9 percent higher than for the same period last year.
Further evidence of business growth is shown by the number of customer interactions with Clearstream’s CreationOnline real-time information service. This service enables customers to access current data on transactions and the number of interactions has risen to a record of 810,000 during May, representing an increase of 102 percent on the same period last year. The number of registered users of CreationOnline increased 45 percent to 9,250 during 2004 across 75 countries.
In Q1 2004, Clearstream also announced the launch of Vestima+, its expanded service for the investment funds sector set to go live later in 2004. Growth rates with the existing services have continued to increase with the number of investment funds related instructions processed reaching almost 130,000 in May 2004, a rise of 38.8 percent from the same period last year.
Additionally, earlier this year, Clearstream launched new settlement routes for the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX) and for LCH.Clearnet and is now a settlement route for 22 trading platforms and Central Counterparties (CCPs).
