The Euroclear group of national and international central securities depositories (CSDs) surpassed all previous performance records across all business activities in 2006. Euroclear Belgium, which became part of the Euroclear group on 1 January 2006, is now included in these results.
Euroclear’s operational performance reflects the benefits of both very positive market conditions and more than EUR 115 million in tariff-related reductions, rebates and other savings delivered to clients in 2006. Service improvements that increased efficiency and reduced both costs and risks for clients continued to attract an increasing flow of new and organic client business growth to the Euroclear group operating entities.
Pierre Francotte, Chief Executive Officer of Euroclear SA/NV, said: “Euroclear’s platform consolidation and market-practice harmonisation programme has involved an unprecedented level of active interaction with clients and other stakeholders. This has resulted in a noticeably more clientcentric approach to the delivery of services across the Euroclear group, which is evident in our operating highlights. Thus, we can give full meaning to our role as a user-owned, user-governed market infrastructure service provider.”
Operating highlights
The entity-specific and combined results of the Euroclear group are as follows:
- Turnover, or the value of securities transactions settled, was EUR 451.7 trillion, an increase of 25% from EUR 361.4 trillion in 2005.
- The value of securities held for Euroclear clients at the end of 2006 was EUR 18.2 trillion, a 16% increase from the EUR 15.7 trillion recorded at year-end 2005.
- The number of netted transactions settled in the Euroclear group increased by 14% to 145 million in 2006 compared with 127 million in 2005.
- The combined daily value of collateral provision outstanding in Euroclear Bank and CRESTCo grew by 12% in 2006 to EUR 537.9 billion compared with EUR 481.9 billion at the end of 2005.
Breakdown per Euroclear entity
Turnover
Euroclear Bank’s 2006 turnover surged 41% to EUR 218.8 trillion from EUR 154.8 trillion in 2005. CRESTCo experienced an 11% growth rate in 2006, with turnover expanding to EUR 144.8 trillion from EUR 130.6 trillion in 2005. Turnover grew 16% at Euroclear France in 2006, rising to EUR 84.3 trillion in 2006 from EUR 72.7 trillion in 2005. Turnover figures for Euroclear Nederland were EUR 3.5 trillion, about 6% higher than the EUR 3.3 trillion recorded in 2005. In 2006, Euroclear Belgium’s turnover was EUR 323 billion.
Securities held in custody
The value of securities held in custody by Euroclear Bank totalled EUR 8.1 trillion in 2006, a gain of 14% from the EUR 7.1 trillion recorded in 2005. More than EUR 46 billion represented net new business won from the other ICSD. Securities held for clients through CRESTCo climbed 15% in 2006 to EUR 3.8 trillion from EUR 3.3 trillion in 2005. At Euroclear France, the 2006 total value of securities held was EUR 5.0 trillion, a 14% rise from last year’s EUR 4.4 trillion. Securities held in Euroclear Nederland increased 8% to EUR 954 billion in 2006 from EUR 881 billion in 2005. Securities held by Euroclear Belgium were EUR 265 billion in 2006.
Number of transactions settled (after netting)
In 2006, Euroclear Bank settled 34 million transactions, an increase of 26% from the 27 million transactions processed in 2005. CRESTCo settled 70 million versus 66 million, or 6% more transactions in 2006 than in 2005, Euroclear France settled 34 million transactions in 2006, 10% more than the 31 million processed in 2005 and Euroclear Nederland processed 3.8 million transactions in 2006, 23% more than the 3.1 million transactions processed the previous year. Euroclear Belgium processed 2.7 million transactions in 2006.
Daily value of collateral provision outstanding
Triparty collateral management deals outstanding at Euroclear Bank rose by 25% to a daily average of EUR 308.7 billion compared with EUR 246.0 billion at the end of 2005. CRESTCo processed the equivalent of EUR 229.2 billion in daily Delivery-by-Value (DBV) and money-market instrument repo instructions in 2006 versus EUR 235.9 billion at the end of 2005.
Funds/FundSettle
The number of fund transactions processed at Euroclear reached a record 6.9
million in 2006. The average number of FundSettle transactions grew 79% in
2006 compared with 2005.
FundSettle now covers more than 33,000 offshore and domestic funds from
21 markets, including clients’ in-house funds, having added more than 3,000
funds in 2006. The number of active FundSettle accounts increased by 30%
in 2006, while total client holdings in funds increased by 90% during the year.
As Europe’s only fully integrated fund-transaction platform - where order
routing, settlement and custody processing is centralised in a single location -
FundSettle is attracting a growing segment of the fund market to the cost and
efficiency benefits to be derived from switching to the automated and
standardised processing procedures that FundSettle offers. Euroclear recently
acquired EMXCo, the UK’s leading provider of investment-fund order
routing, which became part of the Euroclear group on 1 January 2007.
Euroclear is the world’s largest provider of domestic and cross-border settlement and related services for bond, equity and fund transactions. User owned and user governed, the Euroclear group includes Euroclear Bank, based in Brussels, as well as Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear France, Euroclear Nederland and CRESTCo, the central securities depositories of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the UK and Ireland, respectively. Euroclear Bank is rated AA+ by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings.
