CMB And Euronav Joined The Printing On Demand Service Offered By CIK.

CIK, the Belgian CSD, is very pleased to welcome CMB and EURONAV as new instruments eligible in PRIOS (Printing On Demand service).

CIK’s Printing On Demand service enables the rationalisation of the printing of physical bearer shares, which favourably impacts the related costs.

Launched in 2003, PRIOS initially focused on Investment Funds. Now, about 1.000 fund compartments are already eligible in this new service. The system was started with 2 pilot users: Petercam and KBC. Now 9 Belgian and Luxembourg financial institutions are member of this service.

CMB and EURONAV are the first equities listed on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels (the Eurolist) admitted in PRIOS.

In November last year, PROPHAREX was the first equity listed on the non-regulated market of Euronext Brussels – the Free Market - to use PRIOS.

”We are very pleased to offer this new service to CMB and Euronav who, following their corporate action in November last year needed to re-print new shares. The incorporation of CMB and EURONAV in PRIOS has very little operational impact for the CIK Affiliates (financial intermediaries) and offers cost rationalization along the value chain". “After the Investment Funds and equities, we now expect to extend our offering to Bonds" reported Stéphane Bernard, CEO of CIK.

"Applying the ‘printing on demand’ concept to the physical security market represents an enormous progress in terms of rationalisation of workload and cost. The storage of paper shares is eliminated, the quantity of printed shares is drastically reduced and centralisation facilitates reconciliation. Thanks to the use of new techniques, the security level is fully preserved” added Rudi De Pauw the Project Manager who started the project in 2002.