Mike Neilson, chief operating officer at CFM, said: "We were keen to rationalise our existing outsource arrangements, with a view to consolidating them into a more efficient solution. We selected JPMorgan as our main partner after an extensive appraisal of UK service providers. We are impressed with JPMorgan's superior service offering, its experience in working with similar fund management groups and its flexibility in providing services tailored to our client base."

Boyle has spent the previous seven years as director of operations for Bear Stearns' managed account programme. Rainey previously worked at MFS Investment Management, where he helped establish the operations department for their new managed account servicing team.

JPMIS launched a strategic alliance with Vestmark in March, offering managed account administration and outsourcing.

SEI Private Trust Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of SEI Investments, will assume operational responsibility for trust accounting and processing and other operational functions. In addition to back-office outsourcing, Harris Private Bank will use SEI’s integrated portfolio management solution. This will provide decision support, trade order management, trade execution and compliance and reporting services.

"With our focus on forming deep and trusting client relationships by combining advice and investment management, Harris’ strategic direction aligns extremely well with SEI’s," said Cecily Mistarz, executive vice president of product management and development at Harris Private Bank. "SEI’s ability to deliver straight-through business processes will allow us to reduce our operating costs and focus on what we do best: serving our clients."

In addition to Tessler, five new members have been appointed to the board:

Antonio Zoido (presidente, Bolsa de Madrid)

Michel Bois (chairman of the executive board, CDC Ixis Investor Services)

Francesco Vanni d' Archirafi (CEO, Citigroup Global Transaction Services, EMEA)

Guillaume Fromont (directeur général, Credit Agricole Paris)

Ralf Gissel (Vorstandsvorsitzender Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG).

Predictably, Euroclear Bank has issued its figures for 2005, crowing that it will be making rebates and tariff reductions of EUR60m in January 2005. A rebate of EUR40m will be allocated to clients on a pro-rata basis, according to fees paid for settlement, custody and securities borrowing services over the past 12 months. In addition, Euroclear Bank will be cutting its tariffs by more than EUR20m in 2005.

On December 1st, 201 employees in France and 16 in Germany joined State Street. The transfer of operations in the UK is scheduled to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2005.

"The choice of State Street was based upon its proven expertise of securing large and complex investment operations mandates and a demonstrable track record of service delivery. As we continue to grow our business, we are confident that State Street will be a key partner to assist in our servicing requirements," said Nicolas Moreau, chief executive officer of AXA IM.

"We selected CIBC Mellon because of their strong industry reputation, along with their exclusive technology offerings," said Bill Hutchinson, director of securities operations at Manulife Financial. "Another major factor for us was CIBC Mellon’s real-time reporting and straight-through processing initiatives, all of which fit well with Manulife’s operational philosophy."

CIBC Mellon Trust Company has provided transfer agency services and coordinating activities for Manulife’s worldwide shareholders since 2001. Mellon Financial Corporation is also the ongoing transfer agent for Manulife’s US shareholder base.

Liz Nolan will assume the ITS EMEA and Asia regional manager roles in addition to her current responsibilities as global head of the ITS equities business.

Ron Carlson, chief operating officer of NewSmith Asset Management, said: "In reviewing our custody and trustee services requirement, we were conscious of the need for a scaleable service platform that can accommodate our growth in funds under management. The Bank of New York is an excellent service provider that can deliver on this requirement and thereby facilitate the continuing rapid development of our asset management business."

Traynor joins from IBM Consulting where he had responsibility for UK investment management consulting, following the merger of the consulting businesses of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and IBM.

BNP Paribas Asset Management has about EUR197bn in assets under management.

Snowdon joins from Clearstream Banking where he worked for six years. His final role was as relationship director and senior sales manager responsible for global custodians and universal banks. Prior to this, he spent ten years at Barclays, in global securities services, corporate banking and risk management.

The authority has confirmed to Clearstream that investigation is now completed and closed. In July 2001 the Luxembourg prosecutor had concluded there was no evidence of systematic money laundering within Clearstream. Following over three years of detailed investigation, the entire process has been closed and no further action will be taken.

In the UK, BNY employs 3,000 staff and currently has offices in London, Swindon, Liverpool and Edinburgh, and remains committed to these locations. It has also confirmed that this announcement will have no impact on its Brussels operations centre, to which it also remains committed.

In 2003 Investec announced that it would outsource its investment operations to State Street. This middle office support will integrate with IFDS’s existing services for Investec.

Northern will purchase Baring Asset Management's financial services group, which offers fund administration, custody and trust services. The business had about EUR51bn in funds under administration, EUR23bn in custody, and EUR26bn held in trust as of 30 September 2004. It operates from offices in London, Guernsey, Dublin, the Isle of Man and Jersey. 770 employees will transfer to Northern Trust.

"We selected Northern Trust because of their strong technology platform, their experience in the insurance industry, and their top rated securities lending and performance measurement programs," said Keith Terhall, financial reporting, AAA Life Insurance Company. "Northern Trust’s expert staff truly understands the complex needs of insurance companies."

"We were impressed with RBC Global Services product capabilities and its commitment to service," said Nancy Smith, ARC CFO. "RBC's Viewfinder technology, focus on client support and their custody reporting capabilities were all key influences in our decision."

Helen Vaughan, chief operating officer of JO Hambro Capital Management, said: "In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, it’s crucial to look to a provider which can set us aside from the rest of the fund management community. We’ve found this with The Bank of New York, which has continuously demonstrated its commitment to and understanding of our business. We look forward to strengthening our existing relationship with the Bank as the fund grows."

Hogan joins from State Street International Ireland, and Travers comes from Tasc Administration, the fund administration arm of Sanlam which is being acquired by JPMorgan. Both report to Meliosa O’Caoimh, head of operations in Dublin.

Alain Grisay, head of institutional business at F&C, said: "Prior to the merger both F&C and ISIS were committed to outsourced operational models. Old-F&C had already outsourced to Mellon and we are confident that they can deliver the flexibility and high quality client servicing that we are looking for in the enlarged business. By outsourcing our operational administration we can focus on our core competencies and also ensure that costs are more closely aligned to revenues. With the merger concluded and the integration well under way, our focus is very much on delivering strong organic growth. The operational platform we will adopt will be scaleable to meet our growth ambitions," he said.

The deal will see around 50 former ISIS staff based in both Edinburgh and London transferred from F&C to Mellon. F&C Asset Management has GBP118bn of assets under management.

The FMC fixed income attribution model provides a returns-based solution, breaking out excess return into market-related decisions - duration exposure, yield curve positioning, sector allocation and bond specific selection - and currency decisions, such as weighting and timing.

"Hermes is glad to be working with the highly skilled and professional team at RBC and we’re very confident in their abilities," said Tony Allen, director, securities operations for Hermes. "Partnering with a provider who has strong technological and operational capabilities as well as an in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of the fund-of-hedge-fund industry were key factors in our decision."

Overseas Assurance Corporation said: "After a thorough review of all the major providers, State Street was selected because of its strong reputation, its commitment to the Asia Pacific region and its proven experience in meeting the complex reporting and accounting needs of insurance companies. We are confident that OAC will be well served by State Street's wide-array of investment servicing solutions." Last year Great Eastern Life appointed The Bank of New York as master custodian.

Wood joins Northern Trust from The Bank of New York where he was head of infrastructure, specialising in outsourcing, derivatives and co-ordination of the bank’s multiple systems platforms. Previously he held positions at Dresdner and Schroders.

Casteleyn joins from Capco, the financial markets consultancy, where he was a principal consultant in its market infrastructure and operations practice. Casteleyn is based in London and reports to Clive Gande, managing director & deputy general manager of The Bank of New York Europe.

Prior to joining FMC, Manso was director of strategic sales and account management at Omgeo.

Bonacina joins from Credito Emiliano where he worked for five years, most recently as head of international relations. Roti joins from BNP Paribas Securities Services in Paris, where she worked for over three years as a relationship manager.

Dexia Fund Services' ambition is to strengthen its position in France, where it already has a presence through two entities: Dexia Fund Services France and Dexia Fund Administration and Custody. These two entities represent EUR33bn in assets in custody, of which EUR14bn are UCITS assets. Ultimately FMS Hoche and the two other entities will be integrated into a single structure.

Colín joins from Santander Central Hispano (SCH) Investment SA, where he was CEO of its integrated securities services business. In addition he was managing director of SCH’s global custody business.

Under the terms of the agreement, Euroclear and Euronext would enter into a sale agreement for all CIK's shares, and, as a result, all of its activities. In the context of the proposed restructuring of the Euroclear group, which is due to be implemented early next year, CIK would become a fully owned subsidiary of the new Euroclear holding company, Euroclear SA.

Browne joins BBH after fourteen years at HSBC Bank USA, where her most recent position was currency strategist. Before joining HSBC, Browne worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as senior trader on the foreign exchange trading desk.

Rensburg is an investment management business with offices in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast. Rensburg’s investment management group, which also manages venture capital trusts, unit trusts and group schemes for charities and pension funds, has approximately GBP4bn under management.

Robert Allen, operations director of Rensburg plc, said: "Our continuing relationship with Pershing helps us focus resources on our core business and gain tighter control of middle- and back-office costs, while ensuring we have the flexibility and technology required to take our wealth management business forward in the future."

Coxon joined Mellon in 1997 as a securities lending trader. For the last five years, his responsibilities have been focused on international securities lending, running both the equity and fixed-income trading desks in London.

ABN AMRO Mellon lends equities, GDRs and fixed-income securities in over 34 different countries. International assets within its securities lending programmes have grown by over 50%, to EUR180bn, since the inception of the company.

Angus Cameron comes in as chief financial officer for the bank’s operations in Europe. Reporting to Tom Mastro, comptroller, and Tim Keaney, head of Europe, he will be responsible for the management of all European finance department functions. Cameron has worked as global CFO for property/casualty underwriters CNA, deputy finance director at Scottish Widows, and finance director of Barclays Stockbrokers Ltd.

Jim McAuliffe becomes managing director with responsibility for European sales of foreign exchange and derivatives. McAuliffe, who will manage a European team of 16 foreign exchange and derivatives salesmen, has worked at BNY since 1987, most recently for 10 years as vice president, corporate derivatives sales manager. McAuliffe will report to Stephen Lawler, senior vice president, derivative sales and Jorge Rodriguez, senior vice president, foreign exchange sales, both of whom are based in New York.

David Hunt joins HSBC from Citigroup, where he was product manager in the global fund services team, with particular responsibility for fund accounting and client system interfaces. Reporting to Jessica La Trobe Hynes, Hunt will manage a team of relationship managers responsible for HSS Europe's bundled fund accounting and custody relationships. He has 16 years' experience in the asset servicing and global custody business, including 13 years with State Street.

Nick Bruce joins HSBC from State Street, where he was sales and relationship manager for Middle East and Africa. As part of the sales and relationship management team, Nick will report to Graeme McCallum, who was also at State Street/Deutsche GSS.

BNY Global Transition Management helped Fonds de Securité through a total restructuring of the asset allocation of its EUR400m pension fund and provided a combination of project and risk management.

Ann Devos, investment officer at Fonds de Securité, said: "The most important consideration when we undergo complex changes to our pension fund is to minimise the risk to the portfolio. BNY Global Transition Management is an established and growing player with a proven track record in this field. It took a consultative approach to our restructuring and successfully guided us through the process at a reasonable cost."

Princeton Financial Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of State Street Corporation, is a provider of client server-based portfolio accounting and management systems for the institutional investment community. Its PAM investment systems are used by more than 300 investment managers, mutual funds, insurance companies, pension funds, banks and corporations.

Services will include depository bank, fund accounting and transfer agency for the new European fund. William Blair & Company’s administration will be managed on Rufus GTA, BNY’s retail funds dealing and registration software.

Marco Hanig, principal and leader of the mutual funds business at William Blair & Company, said: "In selecting The Bank of New York as our business partner, we were looking for an organisation committed to client service that has the experience and resources to help guide our entry into this market. It is important for us to work with a player capable of understanding the specific demands we face as a business. The global experience of The Bank of New York will provide us with a solid foundation as strategic growth opportunities arise."

"We selected Northern Trust because of their overall commitment to the asset servicing business, their outstanding technology platform, and the professionalism of their people," said Tom Lopez, chief investment officer, The City of Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Plan. "We believe Northern's people and their overall commitment to superior client service and performance will best help us serve the current and future retirement needs of our program."

The transaction includes ABN AMRO’s domestic custody business in the Netherlands and its network domestic custody business in Russia, Greece, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Poland and Taiwan, servicing approximately 550 financial institution and corporate accounts. The transaction should add in the order of $240bn of assets under custody to Citi’s $7.3bn custody portfolio.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close within the next 90 days subject to customary regulatory approvals in applicable markets.

Citi expects that, over time, it will combine ABN AMRO’s domestic custody operations with its current GTS operations in each of the respective markets and that ABN AMRO operational and servicing staff and management will become Citi employees.

HSBC AM will transfer 25 UK-based employees from its operations department to the middle office services department of HSS' institutional fund services (IFS) unit in March 2005.

The operations department of HSBC AM currently supports not only its UK-based institutional business but also provides middle office services to a number of their other domestic and regional businesses. Under the proposed arrangement, the enlarged middle office services department, currently comprised of personnel lifted out from Gartmore Investment Management plc in Q2 2004, will have responsibility for all of the treasury and settlement processing, reconciliation investigations, transitions, corporate governance and pooled funds control that was previously undertaken by HSBC AM.

"I have known R & M for some time as I have been on the receiving end of their surveys for a few years now," said Hill. "It will be really interesting to be on the other side of the fence receiving the questionnaires rather than filling them out."

"I think Liz will add hugely to the survey process, having as she does the perspective of a respondent. We hope that will sharpen up our approach as anything we can do to make the surveys more user friendly has to be an advantage," said Richard Hogsflesh, founder and managing director of R & M Consultants. Hill starts work on 1^st November.

Paddington has 28 years' experience in the custody business, the last 10 of which she spent with JP Morgan Chase. During her career, she has held a number of senior management roles, including global new business implementation, global client service, global custody operations, trustee administration, network and operational risk management and accounting.

Few will be responsible for client relationship management and sales and joins from JPMorgan Chase where she worked for 19 years, most recently as its transition management team’s product manager. Burnell is responsible for client communications and strategic implementation of transitions and joins from G-Port, the global equity portfolio trading division of BNY, where she was head of sales trading. Both Few and Burnell will report to Alex Johnstone, European product head.

State Street has provided securities lending services for Canadian clients since 1990. In 1998, the company established its securities lending trading desk in Toronto. Earlier this year, State Street launched the industry's first Canadian cash collateral fund, which allows Canadian-based lenders to earn additional returns for their securities on loan.

The OPC is an agency established in 1985 as part of the NSW Attorney General’s Department. Its primary objective is to protect and administer the financial affairs and property of individuals unable to make financial decisions for themselves.

"We enjoy a particularly strong relationship with State Street," said Jan Kloet, general manager of SPW's administration office. "After undergoing a formal review process, we are delighted to reappoint State Street, and we look forward to seeing what the added breadth and depth of their increased service offering can do for us."

Also joining the team as a sales and marketing manager is Rob Calder. Calder has been with JPMorgan for 10 years, the last five of which were spent as a relationship manager within JPMorgan Investor Services. He will sell transition management services to Investor Services clients in EMEA.

An immediate effect of the poor performance is a restructuring of certain businesses, resulting in the loss of 425 jobs.

Ron Logue, State Street's chairman and chief executive officer, said: "While our investment servicing and management fees were up about 15% from the year-ago quarter and were flat with the second quarter of 2004, I am very disappointed with our results this quarter. We saw a sharp decline in foreign exchange, brokerage, and securities lending revenue in the quarter compared to the second quarter due to market activity. We lowered expenses, compared to the second quarter, but not at a significant enough level to offset the decline in these market-driven revenues. We are taking steps to align expenses with revenues, not as a reaction to this quarter's results, but as a conscious effort we began early in July. These changes will not only help us better absorb shifts in market-driven revenue, but more importantly, strategically allocate our resources.

"We continued to win new business, adding a total of sixteen new asset servicing assignments in Europe and eight in Asia/Pacific. State Street Global Advisors had some impressive wins this year, both in Europe and in the US, adding $104bn in net new business. As we continue to grow, we will continue to look at our business, and find areas where we can either eliminate or combine units to achieve greater efficiency and capitalise on scale. As an initial result, we are in the process of restructuring our business in several areas: we are limiting our near-term investment in wealth manager services, integrating the management of our balance sheet into the treasury group, combining corporate cash management with securities operations, and exiting the 529 education plan servicing business. As a result of these decisions and some others, we will eliminate about 425 positions, which will save us about $50m annualised with little impact on revenue. We expect to incur a charge of about $25m in the fourth quarter. We believe these actions will put us in a better position to achieve improved long-term results."

As part of the administrative mandate, BBH will provide Chief Compliance Officer Support Services to assist the fund with newly required compliance functions.

"We selected BBH for its excellent reputation in client services. BBH’s consultative approach and integrated solutions completely correspond to our needs," said Steve Champion, president and CEO of the Taiwan Greater China Fund. "We look forward to working with BBH and further maximising our operational efficiencies."

This mandate expands upon an existing relationship with MetLife, as State Street provides custody services for MetLife’s separate account assets. In addition, State Street has been providing custody, fund accounting, fund administration, transfer agency, and securities lending services for approximately $45bn of MetLife’s mutual fund and variable life products since 1983.

"We selected State Street as our provider because of its strong reputation and history of providing insurance companies with investment servicing solutions," said Leonard Kasendorf, vice president, operations and technology for MetLife. "Having worked with State Street over the past two decades, it was a prime choice to help us meet our additional insurance needs."

The appointments follow ISBI’s recent sacking of Northern Trust after alleged misreporting of brokerage quotas.

"We turned to State Street for their quality of service and professional experience," said William Atwood, ISBI executive director. "As there is no room for missteps in this business, we saw State Street as a trustworthy partner who could help us achieve our long-term investment goals for the Illinois state employees."

State Street now services more than 40 percent of the public fund business in the United States.

Deutsche Börse, Clearstream’s parent, has also announced tariff changes to take effect on January 1, 2005. A new pricing model for equities trading will split out fees for all three steps of the process chain: trading, clearing and settlement, as well as a redefinition of the pricing basis in clearing.

In the new model, clearing costs will be displayed separately from settlement costs, and the settlement fee will be calculated according to the resulting settlement instructions.

The contract required Northern to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of commissions to those brokerages, but the State Board alleges that this target was not met, despite Northern’s reports to the contrary.

State Street has taken over as interim custodian, while the Amalgamated Bank of New York and Rhumbline Advisers have been chosen to manage the index fund for the state board's portfolio.

"In a statement, Northern said: "We are disappointed to learn that the Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI) has chosen not to retain Northern Trust for custody and investment management services. The loss of this business will not have a material impact on Northern Trust's financial condition.

"Northern Trust had a custody relationship with ISBI for over 20 years and managed assets on behalf of ISBI for the last two. It is important to note that the quality of Northern Trust's custody service and investment return performance never came into question.

"Northern Trust is proud of the results we have achieved for Illinois State workers. As a global leader in this industry, Northern Trust continues to serve the state of Illinois through its other clients."

The London Borough of Havering Pension Fund has appointed State Street to provide custody services for GBP250m in assets.

The London Borough of Greenwich Superannuation Fund has appointed State Street to provide fund accounting for GBP500m in assets. This mandate builds on an existing relationship with Greenwich, as State Street was appointed as its global custodian in June 2003.

State Street now provides investment services to a total of 26 public funds in the UK.

Klinck, who is based in London, is chairman of Mellon Europe, responsible for developing and executing the bank’s European growth strategy. He also is president of IMS, which covers outsourcing, fund administration, software and performance analytics. Klinck reports to Marty McGuinn, chairman and chief executive officer, in his Mellon Europe role, and to Steve Elliott, senior vice chairman, in his IMS capacity.

Before relocating to London from Pittsburgh in 2001, Klinck was Mellon's head of corporate strategy and development. In that role he led the sale of Mellon's retail banking business to Citizens Financial Group.

Separately, BNY Brokerage and Wilshire Associates have signed a definitive agreement for BNY Brokerage to acquire the execution and commission management assets of Wilshire Associates. This acquisition is subject to New York Stock Exchange approval. Terms were not disclosed.

Tessler joins Deutsche Börse Group following a 25-year career with The Bank of New York, where he held a number of key management positions. Most recently, he was executive vice president of BNY Securities Group, the company's global agency brokerage, clearing and financial services outsourcing business. Before that he was general manager of BNY in Europe from 1998 to 2003, a period of rapid growth for the international business.

The current CEO of Clearstream International, André Roelants, will become the company's chairman on December 10th. In an expanded role, he will focus on client development, strategic marketing, and financial industry relationships and developments.

Cecilia Ardström, chief operating officer at Folksam Asset Management, said: "Our review process was incredibly detailed and thorough. One of our main drivers was a desire to enhance operational efficiency. As our analysis continued it became apparent that Northern Trust was the most suitably equipped provider to meet our specific requirements. With this decision we have a taken a major step forward in helping to achieve some of our long-term business objectives. We are absolutely delighted to have selected Northern Trust and look forward to a long and fulfilled working relationship."

Northern Trust and Svenska Handelsbanken have worked closely with the regulator, Finansinspektionen, to propose and obtain approval of a solution that allows Swedish mutual fund businesses to opt for a global custodian who can also offer trustee services through a local provider.

Folksam is a mutual insurance company offering insurance, savings and loan products. Folksam’s total invested capital of $17bn is invested in accordance with an ethical investment policy that follows UN and OECD guidelines on social responsibility, labour legislation and the environment.

Svenska Handelsbanken was the first Nordic bank to provide complete custody services in the entire Nordic region. The bank offers specialised and tailor-made services in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Brennan joins Omgeo from Clearstream International in Luxembourg, where he worked for seven years. His last role there was as director of DBAG Group and head of origination at Clearstream Banking, based in Luxembourg. Prior to this, he was director of sales, Europe and executive director of customer relations in Europe.

Dickinson joins from Rabobank, where he was responsible for sales and marketing of the bank’s group treasury products. Prior to that, he was managing director of global institutional services at Deutsche Bank/Bankers Trust, where he was part of the heavyweight sales team that included Dick Feehan and Richard Fodder.

Godfrey joins HSBC after five years with Mellon in the UK. In 2001 he was made managing director of Mellon European Fund Services, the investment administration arm of Mellon in Europe. Prior to that, he spent 12 years with Fleming Asset Management, where he managed large operations teams supporting the insurance and investment businesses.

Godfrey has already left Mellon and is currently on gardening leave. Mellon has announced a new management line-up, consisting of David Copley (investment manager outsourcing), George McKay (who assumes overall profit and loss responsibility, as well as all client-facing activities), Ian McNuff (change management) and Ray Pepper (chief operating officer, head of investor services). They will each report directly to Jack Klinck, recently appointed president of Investment Manager Solutions worldwide, a new unit within the asset servicing sector which develops solutions for global financial institutions including outsourcing, fund administration, software and performance analytics.

Godfrey said: "I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Mellon, but have been offered a one-off opportunity elsewhere in the industry that proved a challenge I couldn’t resist. I have been fortunate to lead a great management team, who will no doubt take the business to new levels of success."

Assuming successful conclusion of the negotiations, Old Mutual will outsource its investment administration to the new joint venture, with its operations team forming the nucleus of the new company.

The new joint venture will target local and offshore asset managers, as well as institutional investors, and initially aims to provide full reporting, fund accounting and investment administration services.

"From an asset management perspective, this will leave the rest of Old Mutual business focused purely on the generation of investment performance, which we believe will enable us to deliver even better results to our clients," said Peter Linley, chief investment officer of OMAM (SA).

Henk Beets, chief operating officer of OMAM (SA), said: "Attracting administration activities from the foreign market into this new operation allows offshore companies to benefit from our lower cost base and excellent pool of expertise, while bringing revenue into the country. This makes strategic business sense from both sides, as well as benefiting South Africa."

Tim Keaney, executive vice-president, The Bank of New York, said: "These negotiations fit well with our strategy of growing our business in South Africa where we have a strong track record. The opportunity to leverage from South Africa's relative low cost base is also very attractive. We enjoy a close relationship with both Old Mutual and Standard Bank, two of South Africa’s leading companies, and I am confident that these negotiations will prove to be a model for the future success of South Africa as a international centre for business excellence."

"State Street’s ability to anticipate our needs and offer a wide variety of leading-edge investment services and technology solutions, were key factors in our decision to expand our relationship," said Jay Jacobs, managing director and head of fixed income for ADAM.

This new mandate expands State Street’s existing relationships with both PIMCO and ADAM. State Street now provides a range of investor services for ADAM worldwide for assets totalling $580bn, including $400bn for PIMCO. State Street has been custodian, accounting agent and valuation agent for PIMCO for the past 14 years. In 2000, PIMCO assigned its investment operations in Newport Beach to State Street. In the same year, PIMCO also became the global fixed income manager for ADAM. State Street also serves PIMCO and ADAM as fund accountant, transfer agent and custodian.

ADAM is one of the world’s largest asset management groups and employs more than 750 people in 27 locations across Europe, Asia and the US. Allianz Dresdner Asset Management is the division within the Allianz Group responsible for asset management and has combined assets of EUR1trn. ADAM´s asset management activities operate on two differentiated investment platforms. RCM is the global equity and research platform providing specialist active equity management to Allianz Dresdner Asset Management. ADAM owns specialist equity firms in the US, amongst them Nicholas Applegate, NFJ and Oppenheimer Capital. PIMCO acts as the global fixed income and bond research platform for the ADAM units throughout the world.

His current responsibilities, which include executive management for several of the bank’s securities servicing businesses, will be assumed by other members of the executive team.

"During his two decades with the Company, Tom Perna has helped The Bank of New York become the leading provider of securities services to the financial services industry," said Tom Renyi, BNY's chairman and chief executive officer.  "We are grateful for his many years of service and for his personal role in establishing a winning team of executives in key segments of our business.  They will ensure we further expand the global leadership position that Tom has helped us achieve."

BNY was selected to provide outsourcing services to RCM Capital Management LLC in San Francisco in 2003.

BNY will assume responsibility for operational functions including trade support, asset servicing, data management, position keeping, client reporting, fund accounting and custody for UK assets and clients. Upon completion of the conversion, a number of senior RCM operational managers and staff will join BNY’s London offices. RCM (UK) has in excess of $8.75bn of assets under management on behalf of financial institutions and fund vehicles.

Michael Hooper, chief financial and operating officer of RCM, said, "We hope to realise significant operational efficiencies across the board through this outsourcing partnership. Following a thorough review of the services available, we were confident that The Bank of New York would provide us with the strongest platform available in the market and thorough support for our business processes. The partnership provides us with a basis for future growth."

Jim Palermo, vice chairman and global head of the custody business, will take on additional responsibility for Mellon's global foreign exchange business.

Jack Klinck, chairman of Mellon Europe and head of Mellon European Fund Services, will also take on leadership of Mellon's investment manager solutions business, including Eagle Investment Systems, as well as oversight for Russell/Mellon.

Allan Woods, vice chairman and chief information officer, is responsible for the operations management groups in the asset servicing businesses.

All three will continue to report to senior vice chairman Steve Elliott in their asset servicing roles.

Prior to this appointment, Steele held senior relationship manager positions at JPMorgan Investor Services for six years with responsibility for servicing several of their key clients.

Copley will report to Richard Godfrey, managing director of Mellon European Fund Services, and will have responsibility for all operations that involve servicing the asset, including the investment administration team that transferred from F&C last year.

Hutchinson reports to Hardy and to Nick Ring, managing director of NTGI Europe. He joins NTGI from Instinet where he spent over 10 years, latterly as head of UK clients and portfolio trading.

Euroclear Bank has also announced a reduction in its tariff for French and UK equities. Settlement fees are being reduced by up to 20% for UK equity transactions. For French equities, safekeeping fees are being reduced by up to 50%.

Mariano Novoa Flores, president of CEDEVAL, said: "We selected The Bank of New York because of its extensive experience in Latin America, as well as local language capabilities and expertise. We will be able to better manage our assets by using INFORM, The Bank of New York’s internet transaction and reporting application, which will allow us to monitor our transactions in real-time and access information 24 hours a day."

CEDEVAL is an affiliate of La Bolsa de Valores de El Salvador and is responsible for the custody and administration of securities for its direct and indirect members. CEDEVAL has approximately US$3bn in total assets under custody.

MBF is a provider of health and financial protection products and advice in Australia. MBF expanded its financial services offerings following the acquisition of ClearView from Insurance Australia Group in January 2004.

The transition of assets valued at AUD1.2bn is expected to be completed this month.

"After a thorough due diligence process, State Street emerged as the provider with the most robust services to fulfil our needs," said Gary Chinery, vice president and treasurer for TIAA-CREF. "The company’s global scale, corporate action processing system and strong client service professionals were also key factors in our decision." TIAA-CREF was formerly a Deutsche Bank GSS client.

David Sachon, Threadneedle’s head of distribution, said: "We have always been a forward-thinking organisation. This deal stems from our analysis of the major changes that will occur over the next decade as supermarkets, aggregators and platforms increasingly form the bridge between fund managers and clients. The challenge for our industry is to manage this potential reduction in business processing volumes whilst maintaining high quality service and containing unit costs.

"We are confident that The Bank of New York, which services $1.6trn of assets for fund companies worldwide, will enable Threadneedle not only to continue meeting the service expectations of our clients but to exceed them."

"State Street has provided us with investment management expertise for more than three years and we’re pleased to expand on that relationship to include their proven investment servicing expertise," said Simon Kayll, finance director, Medical Protection Society.

The Medical Protection Society is a mutual society that provides advice and indemnity to doctors facing legal problems that arise from their clinical practice. With more than 200,000 members, it has operations around the world, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

This will include market entry strategies, acquisition analysis and implementation, back-office outsourcing structures and their delivery, and the expansion of Northern Trust’s wealth management capabilities outside North America. He will report to Steve Potter, group head for the international market segment at Northern Trust.

Leech joins Northern Trust from State Street in London, where he held a number of senior management positions, most recently head of wealth management services. Previously, he was chief financial officer for RBS Trust Bank.

Leech said: "I have decided to join Northern Trust for a number of reasons. I have a real enthusiasm for their philosophy of team-oriented, client-centric business building; their focus on market expansion by attracting, developing and promoting local talent; and the priority that Northern Trust is placing on building its international businesses.’’

"ECSDA urges the Commission to focus its legislative aims on the removal of the barriers identified by the two Giovannini reports in 2001 and 2003 to reduce cross-border settlement costs for all market users. ECSDA has already demonstrated the commitment of European settlement systems to the harmonisation process by publishing a detailed report earlier this year setting out how some of the barriers to low-cost, cross-border settlement will be removed by settlement systems during 2005. ECSDA therefore strongly supports, and is delighted to be part of, the Commission’s newly established Clearing and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring (CESAME) Group."

Ring any bells? It might do. This is what Euroclear had to say in its submission to the EC last month.

"We encourage the Commission to concentrate its future legislative activity on the legal and tax procedure issues identified in the two Giovannini reports, which, the market believes, generate the bulk of the costs of cross-border settlement and which require the involvement of the public sector across Europe to co-ordinate their removal. Therefore, we welcome the Commission’s proposal to set up a high-level Advisory and Monitoring Group to tackle the Giovannini barriers, and the formation of specialist legal and tax groups advising the Commission to help address these specific areas."

Want more? What about these?

"ECSDA believes that while a limited framework directive focusing on access rights to, and passporting rights for, securities settlement systems could be helpful in creating a regulatory level playing field, such a directive will not reduce greatly the cost of cross-border settlement. Before drafting any proposal for such a directive, however limited, the Commission should produce a full regulatory impact analysis setting out the costs and benefits of the directive for the market." (ECSDA)

"Before concluding that a framework directive is necessary, we urge the Commission to draw-up and publish a full Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) of all of its recommendations. This should provide an objective assessment and comparison of whether a legislative or non-legislative approach is best designed to reduce transaction costs and risk, and to maintain open competition." (Euroclear)

Euroclear is so accommodating, it even sent out the press release on ECSDA’s behalf. Isn’t that nice?

The first wave of harmonisation is expected in the Belgian, Dutch and French markets, in line with Euroclear's recent announcement to offer a harmonised settlement platform in 2007 both for fixed-income transactions within these markets and for equity trades from Euronext's single order book.

Mellon will provide accounting services for an additional 29 unit trusts and more than 130 life and pension funds under the Scottish Amicable brand, as well as renewing the contract for its existing services to Prudential for their unit trusts and life and pension fund ranges.

Martin Lewis, chief operating officer for M&G, said: "We are very pleased to not only extend our partnership with Mellon, but also recognise their high standards of service and value by awarding them the additional mandate."

Earlier this year M&G sacked Clydesdale as its trustee and custodian and appointed Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Trust to replace it. Clydesdale subsequently announced the closure of its UK securities services business.

Mellon has had a relationship with Prudential since 1996, when it was appointed as fund accountant in a joint deal with Midland Bank (now HSBC).

Bob Woodruff, vice president and chief financial officer at Saint Louis University, said: "We were very impressed by The Bank of New York’s comprehensive set of solutions for college and university clients, its consultative approach to our business needs and the flexibility of its client service model. The capabilities of INFORM, its technology platform, and its ability to integrate custody and related services distinguish the bank as a leader in the securities servicing industry."

Cohen spent three years at Thomas Murray as a senior consultant within the pension fund and investment manager segments. He was also responsible for managing the firm’s Private Rating and Operational Benchmarking (PROBE) product.

Prior to this appointment, Hamilton was project manager at Mellon European Fund Services and held several senior fund management administration positions at F&C Management Ltd.

The service uses Reech FastVal, a system developed by SunGard Reech, a provider of independent derivative valuations and risk management solutions. JPMIS has incorporated Reech FastVal’s OTC valuation capabilities into the valuation and reporting aspects of the fund accounting product.

"We were impressed with Mellon’s experience, scaleable infrastructure and commitment to the separately managed account space," said Kevin Hunt, executive vice president and head of sales, marketing and product development for Old Mutual Asset Management.

The group's parent is Old Mutual plc, an international financial services company based in London, with operations in asset management, life assurance, banking and general insurance.

Baker will manage all aspects of State Street’s London-based services for collective schemes and pension funds, including risk and compliance, trustee services, fund administration and accounting. As part of this role he will manage the integration and implementation of major contracts, including the mandate from Investec Asset Management to provide investment operations services for $34bn in assets. Baker will also oversee senior level relationships with clients and prospects.

Prior to this appointment, Baker was head of State Street’s investment servicing business in Australia. He joined State Street in 1988 and worked in the UK from 1989 to 1997.

At last, JPMIS has made its move. It has agreed to acquire Tranaut Fund Administration Ltd., a privately-owned hedge fund administration services company. The acquisition is expected to close during the third quarter of the year and is subject to regulatory approval.

Tranaut was formed in 1999 by hedge fund administrators with a combined experience of over 40 years. Tranaut has offices in Ireland and Bermuda.

Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said: "Making cross-border clearing and settlement as efficient, safe and cost-effective as at national level is crucial to a real single securities market in the EU. The stakes are high and the CESAME group will help the opening up of the EU clearing and settlement environment by providing impetus to the whole project."

The group will advise the Commission on the coordination of action between the public and the private sectors and on the practicalities for the removal of those Giovannini barriers for which the private sector has sole or joint responsibility.

The group will also monitor the results of the whole process to help the Commission ensure that its efforts will be sustained at a pace consistent with private sector reforms and developments. Finally, it will liaise with two separate groups of experts (to be established in Autumn 2004) that will tackle the legal barriers and the barriers related to tax procedures which are expected to be more difficult to address, as well as with G30 and other international bodies.

TIAA-CREF Asset Management will manage assets for endowments, foundations, pensions, and other institutional clients. The asset manager plans to make a special effort to target universities, where the TIAA-CREF brand is well known.

"Mellon Global Securities Services has received numerous accolades throughout the industry for its high levels of service and technology," said Nancy Heller, head of TIAA-CREF Asset Management. "This type of support will prove invaluable as we grow our new institutional asset management business."

With $300bn in assets under management, TIAA-CREF is a Fortune 100 company and a national financial services organisation, including the premier pension system for education and research employees.

Since M&G, one of National’s last remaining significant clients, announced its intention to transfer its UK investment funds to Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Trust, the end has been in sight for an operation that has only GBP40m of assets in custody. The National, most notably under the Clydesdale brand, has provided custodian services in the UK since 1987. NCS UK offers trustee and depositary services, custody, sub-custody and fund administration from its base in Glasgow.

The agreement with BNY does not involve a transfer of business infrastructure or a legal entity. The terms of the agreement will not be disclosed.

BNY is National’s global custodian, a position which was in some doubt earlier this year after it seemed that JPMorgan Investor Services had struck a deal to replace it. However, the fall-out from National’s forex losses scuppered that deal.

Ray Lester, head of NCS UK, said: "The National is a market leader for custody and investment administration services in Australia and New Zealand, and will continue to offer a full range of security services in those markets. However within the UK, ongoing market consolidation and increased price competition mean that we would be unable to remain profitable in this business in the UK in the long term.

"We are contacting our UK clients to inform them of this decision and to organise meetings to introduce them to The Bank of New York and to outline the proposed process. Assuming client agreement, the transfer to The Bank of New York is expected to be achieved over a period of six months. Clients will continue to receive services from the National until their transfers are complete."

Lester said the decision would impact approximately 140 roles in NCS UK. Employees are being informed of the decision and meetings will be held with all staff and the union (UNIFI) to discuss options available to them. The agreement with The Bank of New York does not affect the National’s other European operations.

Goold will look after new business development for the UK asset owner group including transition management, currency overlay and commission recapture. As transition manager, McGee will advance State Street’s business to current and potential clients.

Prior to joining State Street, Goold was responsible for institutional business development at Morgan Stanley Asset Management, where he oversaw relationships with local authorities, pension funds and investments consultants in the UK. McGee was previously international equity portfolio manager for Barclays Global Investors in London where he was responsible for managing over GBP15bn of client assets.

"JPMIS was a natural choice for this mandate because of its considerable expertise and strong technology platform," said Connie Yost, at MLIG. "We look forward to continuing to work with JPMorgan to help achieve our investment goals."

ADIG-Investment is a brand within COMINVEST Asset Management Group, Frankfurt, which manages capital for more than one million clients with total assets over EUR24bn. Germany's oldest investment management brand with over 54 years’ experience has selected Vestima+ to deliver straight-through processing to its investment fund order-routing environment.

Heinrich Echter, managing director of COMINVEST S.A. said: "We see clear benefits from using Vestima+ across our widening distribution network and various channels. It will enable us to cut costs by providing an easy-to-implement, cost efficient order processing facility for all our funds. We expect STP rates to climb as a direct result and our customers can benefit from the open settlement route policy that Clearstream has adopted."

Nott will be responsible for strengthening relationships with existing Citisoft clients as well as developing new business opportunities.

Bertie joins from AXA (New Zealand) where she was responsible for investment operations for the past three and a half years. Previously, she held senior investment operations and systems management roles in major financial services companies, including Royal and Sun Alliance Asset Management, State Street (New Zealand) and National Provident Fund.

Nicolas Faust, the current head of BNP Paribas Securities Services in New Zealand will continue to be responsible for the New Zealand Branch until October. Faust was seconded from Europe to assist with the integration of the Australasia businesses when BNP Paribas acquired Cogent from AMP in September 2002.

There are 34 customers live on Omgeo Central Trade Manager (Omgeo CTM), the company’s global central matching platform for non-US domestic and cross border trades, and 130 live users on Omgeo’s US central matching solution, Omgeo OASYS-TradeMatch. Nearly 80 clients in Europe, the US and Asia are currently in the Omgeo CTM implementation pipeline.

But…in 2002 Omgeo claimed to have more than 50 Omgeo CTM clients, so are they going backwards? That all depends on how you define clients. In 2002, clients included broker/dealers, vendors and custodians. In 2004, Omgeo’s definition of ‘customers’ appears to be limited to fund managers. Unless you know better…

BNY, which uses the Netik InterView Investment Hub product as part of its BNY SmartSource outsourcing solution, will now make the product available to its financial institution client base. The bank’s clients can subscribe to the Netik platform on a stand-alone basis or bundled with other services such as fund accounting, custody or BNY SmartSource.

The Netik solution provides data management and consolidated reporting capabilities that leverage its data warehouse for portfolio and investment information, reference data and analytics.

The initiative will provide clients with a single access point of their choice to settle trades struck on any of the Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris segments of the Euronext exchange. It will convert cross-border transactions among these Euronext markets into harmonised, domestic-type transactions. Clients will also be able to settle the cash component of their trades through any one of the three central banks within the Euronext zone.

CIK (the Belgian central securities depository), Euroclear France and Euroclear Nederland will use a common settlement and custody platform, based on harmonised market rules and practices within the three markets. The platform will combine elements of the SSE, settlement, custody and communications features from the Euroclear group's single application platform and common communications interface, and the adaptation of RGV, the real-time settlement platform of Euroclear France. Use of the adapted Euroclear France platform is temporary, pending completion of the Euroclear's single platform.

Folkeboersen (People's Exchange) goes live on 1 January 2005 and will be funded through a contribution equivalent to 1% of the annual salary of those among the country's 3.3 million employees that opt to invest in it. Folkeboersen replaces an existing special savings scheme called SP, which at the end of 2003 was valued at EUR5.8bn.

Subscription and redemption instructions for international funds received via the portal will be pooled by ATP and sent directly to FundSettle, which will process order routing to the relevant funds and the settlement of all transactions. Cash settlement and custody services will be provided by ATP's custodian bank, Nordea Bank Copenhagen.

National Bank of Kazakhstan’s assets were previously held by four separate providers.

In order to enable non-French fund distributors to gain access to domestic French funds, Vestima+ will communicate with BNP Paribas Securities Services using SWIFT messages and the specific template introduced by SWIFT's French Fund Market Practice Group.

Jeremy Hester, head of European business development for the bank’s global fund services business, said: "As a result of our recent success with the investment manager community, these clients are now looking to us to provide additional services. We already have a strong fund accounting pipeline from existing and prospective clients. There is a real appetite for our expanded GFS offering." Last month Northern was confirmed as sole global custodian for the UK investment funds of M&G, Prudential and Scottish Amicable.

Northern has selected INVEST ONE, the accounting engine from SunGard Investment Management Systems, to support the business.

It has also boosted its expertise with the hiring of additional product specialists. Gary Hewitt joined earlier this year after spending the previous five years at The Bank of New York, where he worked as a project manager within the fund accounting department working on new client transitions and unit trust to OEIC conversion projects. Hewitt has over 15 years of experience in the fund accounting industry.

Sarah Noone has joined the UK fund accounting team. Prior to joining Northern, Noone was a manager at Smith and Williamson where her responsibilities included the day to day management of the fund accounting function for a range of 40 schemes, and the management of new fund set-ups and scheme reconstructions.

"My heart surgery in May of 2003 prompted me to reassess my personal priorities," said Spina. "Choosing to retire now has been an extremely difficult decision for me, but I am confident that I am leaving the company at a very good time. Despite the market tumult and the challenges we have faced over the past four years, State Street has never been stronger or more focused, and the growth opportunities for the company now are virtually limitless. Given our success and remarkable bench strength, I believe that the time is right to hand things over to Ron, in whom I have complete confidence."

Spina joined State Street in 1969 and has held a variety of positions within the company, including chief financial officer and treasurer. During his four-year tenure as CEO, Spina led State Street through the largest acquisition in its history (Deutsche Bank’s Global Securities Services business) and sharpened the company’s focus through divestitures of its corporate trust and private asset management businesses. Assets under custody grew by $3.2trn to $9.4trn and assets under management crossed the $1trn mark, making State Street Global Advisors the world’s largest institutional asset manager.

Logue (58) has held a number of leadership positions at State Street. He joined the company in 1990 as senior vice president and head of investment servicing for US mutual funds. He was named chief operating officer in 2000 and president in 2001. No announcement has been made about his replacement.

Charley Cock will head the unified sales and relationship management function, with Tony Solway as deputy head. This team will focus on four client segments: financial intermediaries, institutional investors, corporates and a securities industry group.

Michel Laurent will head the product and marketing team, with Jean-Marc Pasquet as deputy. The team will cover all BNP Paribas Securities Services’ products, reorganised into four product lines: clearing, settlement and custody, global fund services, global liquidity services and global corporate trust.

JPMorgan's relationship with American Century began in 1996 and includes custody, investment products, broker dealer services, credit syndication, trust services and cash management.

"JPMorgan Investor Services was a natural partner for us because of the full range of securities services and industry expertise they provide," said Wayne McCoach, custody operations manager at American Century. "By using Message Express, American Century and its clients will benefit from greater operational efficiencies, reducing cost and risk."

Crozzoli joins State Street from PFPC, where he served for four years as vice president of business development. Prior to PFPC, he served for three years with the United Nations, where he was responsible for project management.

"After a competitive selection process, we appointed State Street as custodian because of its expertise in servicing UK pension funds," said Philip Batty, group pensions manager for The Weir Group PLC. "The opportunity to take advantage of State Street’s value-added services in the future was another factor in our decision."

Adams worked in various roles at Deutsche Bank and subsequently State Street over the past decade. In his new role, he will report to Paulo Sousa, chief commercial officer.

Pierre Francotte, chief executive officer of Euroclear Bank, said: "Euroclear Bank's aim is to be the lowest cost provider of settlement and related services for cross-border equity trades, as book-entry settlement is the most effective way to reduce costs and risks. We believe our new service for London Stock Exchange trades will be particularly attractive to clients seeking to centralise their equity activities across European markets."

Euroclear Bank's service for London Stock Exchange trades follows similar services that were launched for Euronext Paris trades in July 2002 and Euronext Brussels trades in April 2004.

"We selected Mellon because of the strength of their technology platform and analytics," said Holland Timmins, executive administrator and chief investment officer of the Texas Permanent School Fund.

Following a thorough review of its current arrangement and a full proposal assessment, the selection exercise has been undertaken and the decision to proceed further with Mellon European Fund Services was announced internally in May. Contracts are expected to be signed in the next few weeks.

"There were a number of key factors that led to our choice of Mellon European Fund Services, such as, the close cultural fit between our organisations, the strength of their team and the quality of their operational solution," said Jon Bennett, director of retail fund business for AEGON Asset Management UK.

AEGON Asset Management UK is based in Edinburgh and employs more than 250 staff, managing around GBP33bn in assets. The retail offering consists of an OEIC with 13 sub-funds, the total value of which is around GBP550m.

Northern Trust will provide a complete range of outsourcing services, including full trade support, portfolio accounting, reconciliation, and cash management including foreign exchange execution. In addition, JBIM and its institutional clients will have access to Northern’s technology platform which will deliver customised client reporting and performance measurement services.

"In looking for an outsourcing provider, Julius Baer recognised the need to find a firm that could offer us a true partnership approach with a strong understanding of our core business, our operational requirements, and our clients’ reporting and performance measurement needs," said Tony Williams, head of asset management Americas, JBIM. "With their flexible technology platform and strong service-oriented approach, the selection of Northern Trust will allow us to enhance our straight-through-processing and provide robust reporting and performance measurement solutions to our clients. We are also looking to leverage efficiencies of technology, scale and service that will generate outstanding value for our clients, and allow us to remain focused on providing world class investment solutions to our institutional client base."

JBIM used Citisoft, the specialist investment management consulting firm, to help with the evaluation.

Subject to a successful outcome of the discussions, the transition of services is expected to commence later in 2004. The consolidation will cover services for core processing of a range of funds domiciled in the UK, Dublin, Jersey and Luxembourg, the majority of which are already performed by third party providers.

Malcolm Smith, head of investment operations at BGI said: "By consolidating our service providers, we can streamline our operating model, allowing us to take advantage of scale across the business. We feel JPMorgan Investor Services has the breadth and capability to service our diverse product range for our European client base."

JPMIS is thought to have fought off strong opposition from a number of players, including The Bank of New York. BGI Europe manages assets of over US$263bn from its European office in London and over US$1.1trn globally.

The Commission’s enquiry into this case identified two types of abuse: refusal to supply and discriminatory pricing.

Refusal to Supply: Clearstream refused to supply Euroclear with clearing and settlement services for registered shares issued under German law. While competition law recognises the freedom of companies to freely choose their trading partners, companies in a dominant position have a special responsibility. In this case, Clearstream’s behaviour qualified as refusal to supply because it is the only final custodian of German securities kept in collective safe custody, which is the only significant form of custody today for securities traded. New entry into this activity is unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Clearstream Banking AG is an unavoidable trading partner.

Euroclear Bank eventually obtained the clearing and settlement services from Clearstream in November 2001, more than two years after it requested those services. During the entire period Clearstream Banking AG denied Euroclear Bank clearing and settlement for services registered shares. The dilatory behaviour of Clearstream vis-à-vis Euroclear Bank contrasts with the usual delay of a maximum four months within which other comparable customers were supplied with clearing and settlement services.

Price Discrimination: Between January 1997 and January 2002, Clearstream, for equivalent clearing and settlement services, charged a higher per transaction price to Euroclear Bank than to other securities depositories outside Germany. The Commission examined in detail the content of the services and the costs of providing them in order to establish whether the price difference could be justified and concluded that it was not.

While the infringements have now come to an end, the Commission adopted its decision in order to clarify the legal situation. The decision should provide the necessary clarity to Clearstream and to other companies active in clearing and settlement.

After all this, however, the Commission decided not to impose a fine. Among other factors, the Commission took into account that there is no Community case law or jurisprudence dealing with the competition analysis of clearing and settlement.

The assets, previously held with the pension fund’s investment managers, moved to Northern in April.

"The outsourcing agreement with State Street allows Investec Asset Management to focus on its core business of managing clients’ assets and follows a growing trend in the fund management industry to outsource non-core functions," said Hendrik du Toit, chief executive officer of Investec. "By using State Street’s experience and technology platform, we will be able to direct more resources to developing innovative solutions to help our clients succeed."

Approximately 66 Investec staff members based in Cape Town and London have become employees of State Street.

The mandate with Investec will augment State Street’s existing fund servicing capabilities in South Africa. Through its alliance with Nedcor Ltd., established in 1998, State Street provides a variety of investment services to pension funds, insurance funds, asset managers and sovereign agencies.

Lancashire County Council has one of the largest local authority funds in the UK. Advised by Mercer Investment Consulting, Lancashire has appointed ABN AMRO Mellon as its first-ever global custodian.

ABN AMRO Mellon will provide global custody, investment accounting and securities lending services, as well as Russell/Mellon’s performance measurement and investment monitoring services.

Mark Bennett, principal accountant of Lancashire County Council said: "This is a crucial time for our pension fund and we are confident that moving to a single global custodian is a positive move, which will set the fund up with solid foundations for a successful future. ABN AMRO Mellon offered flexible access to the full range of services we need, with excellent technology, at good value for money."

Summonte joins BNP Paribas Securities Services from Deutsche Bank, where she spent four years selling securities processing products to Italian and Swiss institutional clients. Prior to joining Deutsche in 2000, she worked at San Paolo IMI bank, based in Frankfurt.

Currently the pension scheme’s master global custodian, BNY will also provide investment accounting and compliance monitoring and reporting. A number of staff will transfer from ESPS to BNY as part of the deal.

Richard Barlow, chief executive of ESPS, said: "We chose to widen our mandate with The Bank of New York because it has demonstrated its commitment not only to global custody, but also to the UK pension fund sector. We are confident that the bank will continue to maintain and improve our risk controls and provide us with high quality service, both of which are of critical importance to our members."

Pace joins from State Street, where he was most recently senior vice president, director sales & marketing, investor services group. Pace joined State Street in 1990 and held a series of sales positions.

"We have taken a number of aggressive steps toward building a new sales culture, which can help us significantly increase revenues," McGuinn said. "Bringing Drew Pace to Mellon, along with other actions we have been taking to strengthen our sales processes and organisation, should yield measurable results in the short term and lay the groundwork for our long-term success."

Goodbody Stockbrokers will take a fully outsourced clearing and settlement service. This service will be provided through a newly established subsidiary in Dublin, Pershing Securities International Limited. Goodbody will be the first Irish stockbroker to outsource its clearing and settlement functions. Through its Model A clearing services, Pershing will settle all of Goodbody’s client trades and issue contract notes in the firm’s name.

Goodbody Stockbrokers is Ireland's longest established stockbroking firm. It is a leading institutional broker and the largest private client firm in Ireland, representing over 11,000 investors. Goodbody Stockbrokers is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AIB Capital Markets plc, a division of AIB Group plc, with which BNY has had a long association through custody and administration joint ventures.

Bloxham Stockbrokers will take a fully outsourced trading, clearing and settlement service. Bloxham, Ireland's largest independent stockbroker, will become the first Irish firm to adopt the Model B outsourcing structure, providing the firm with significant cost savings and enhanced risk management. Under this structure, Pershing Securities International Limited in Dublin will provide a full range of clearing and settlement for all securities transactions on behalf of Bloxham.

The GlobalSpectrum CCF is aimed at small- and medium-sized UK pension fund investors for whom holding a portfolio of US equities has not previously been financially viable. This fund is the first of its kind to take advantage of regulatory changes in Ireland, where the fund will be domiciled, which allow for pooled funds to receive US equity dividends free of US withholding tax. According to DeAM, this new structure will result in annual savings of 30 basis points.

Currently DeAM has clients with assets totalling £128.6m immediately ready to invest in the fund, with an expectation that the open-ended fund may reach total assets under management of approximately £500m once all interested clients move their assets from other portfolios.

In this new role, McDonald will lead client development efforts for State Street’s clients across the region. He will focus on State Street’s strategic client relationships, and ensure continued enhancement of client service standards.

State Street will provide fund administration and investment operation services for ABN AMRO Asset Management in the Netherlands, UK, Luxembourg and Sweden. The services will be phased in over a two-and-a-half year period starting this summer. As part of the mandate, State Street will expand its operations in Amsterdam and develop a fund servicing centre with approximately 110 AAAM staff transferring to State Street. Custody services are not part of this arrangement and will remain with incumbent providers.

Bert Schouws, COO/CFO of ABN AMRO Asset Management said, "We are excited that we have reached this agreement with State Street. We wanted a provider of the highest quality and reliability. Outsourcing our fund administration and investment operations will enable us to support our business more effectively and to focus on the investment process. We will put in place a structure for future growth while reducing costs and removing operational risk from our balance sheet."

ABN AMRO Asset Management manages assets of EUR166bn from over 20 locations. The assets include individually mandated client portfolios as well as a wide range of investment funds, distributed through financial intermediaries and offered to institutional clients directly.

"We expect to increase the efficiency of our own operations through the use of Mellon GSS’s advanced technology platform," said Nancy Celick, chief operating officer of Hotchkis and Wiley. "We were impressed with Mellon’s ability to process data and deliver information in a timely manner and feel this will be a benefit to our clients."

Founded in 1980, Hotchkis and Wiley is based in Los Angeles. It is an employee-owned US value-oriented equity investment manager.

The Pension Fund of Commerce was established in 1956. It is a multi employer pension scheme for employees of offices and stores in and around Reykjavik. At the end of 2003, 24% of total assets consisted of foreign equities, 13% domestic equities and the rest domestic bonds. The fund has a long-term plan of increasing its foreign equity exposure.

"BBH’s reputation in the industry and its dedication to building lasting client relationships separated the firm from the field of competitors," said Thorgeir Eyjolfsson, managing director of Pension Fund of Commerce. "The bank’s comprehensive suite of products and proven back office capabilities were a crucial factor in the selection process. Last but not least, BBH was highly recommended by foreign colleagues."

As part of this appointment, BNP Paribas Dublin will provide fund administration, transfer agency, trustee and global custody services. In the UK, the bank will also provide ISA and PEP administration services, as well as direct transfer agency services for UK investors.

"We are delighted to forge this relationship with State Street. Its approach to providing truly local depotbank services, their unrivalled commitment to Germany and the depth and breadth of its international service offering makes it uniquely suited to service Lufthansa’s needs," said Axel Tillmann, general manager treasury of Lufthansa.

William Littleboy, SLI director of operations, said: "This represents another significant step in the partnership between Standard Life Investments and Citigroup Global Transaction Services that was announced last November. The agreement provides us with state of the art systems and processes thus enhancing our ability to provide new and innovative products on a truly global scale. Our ambitious joint project is proceeding right on plan. We are grateful for the help of our outgoing custodian JP Morgan, without whose professionalism, expertise and cooperation we could not have achieved this major milestone."

"Securing RBC Global Services as our provider of custody and administrative services is another example of how we are able to leverage our relationship with CI to enhance the efficiency of our operations and benefit our clients by reducing the operating expenses of the funds," said Joseph Canavan, president and chief executive officer of AAM.

With this latest mandate, RBC Global Services will provide outsourcing services for all investment funds at CI, including those of CI Mutual Funds Inc. and Skylon Capital Corp. The CI relationship is the largest of its kind in the Canadian market, with RBC supplying custody and investment administration services for CI investment fund assets totalling approximately C$43 billion.

May is currently a board member of both Euroclear Bank and Euroclear plc, and a former board member of CRESTCo. For the past 10 of his 23 years in the financial sector, Tim has been actively involved in securities settlement developments across the UK, including the implementation of a CREST test site at Carr Sheppards, the British private-client stockbroker. He is also a board member of the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers.

Hugh Simpson has been chief executive of CRESTCo since November 2002, having been acting CEO from January 2002. He will be continuing for a period to allow a smooth transition.

In his new role, Morris will direct development of the ABN AMRO Mellon trustee and depositary operating model as well as formulating the sales and marketing strategy. He is expected to appoint a team of specialists to support him.

Philip Evans, head of investment accounts at Co-operative Insurance Society, said: "Having undertaken a detailed review of potential global custodians we chose HSBC due to its strength and dominance in the UK market, its competitive pricing structure and its client-focused approach. We are looking forward to continuing our close working relationship with HSBC."

Prior to joining Northern Trust, Callick was a relationship manager for UK pension funds and asset managers at JPMorgan Investor Services.

• Set up an Advisory and Monitoring group: The Commission intends to set up an advisory and monitoring group in order to tackle all Giovannini barriers for which the private sector has sole or joint responsibility, and to promote the overall integration and liberalisation project;

• Propose a Directive on Clearing and Settlement: The Commission considers it necessary to complement the market-led removal of the relevant Giovannini barriers with a secure legal framework ensuring the freedom to provide securities clearing and settlement services throughout the EU on the basis of common requirements. Such a framework will ensure that restrictions and barriers as regards the location of clearing and settlement are lifted. It will also ensure the mutual recognition of the various national systems based on the home country principle. The Directive should be a framework Directive, in that it should only set out general principles in conformity with the Lamfalussy process.

• Address legal and tax issues: The Commission intends to set up expert groups to consider the legal and tax-related barriers to integration, to evaluate the situation and, if needed, suggest methods of harmonisation of national law and/or procedures.

• Ensure the effective implementation of competition law: The Commission and national competition authorities will address anti-competitive market practices, such as unfair denial of access and the imposition of excessive and/or discriminatory pricing, and at the same time monitor existing monopoly positions and further industry consolidation intervening when necessary.

Deadline for responses is July 30^th. The full document can be found by clicking on this link - Europa C&S communication April 04.

Biggs will have direct responsibility for all strategic, tactical, business development, marketing and relationship management activities undertaken by the bank’s corporate & institutional services business unit in the region. She will continue to report to Steve Potter, the group head for the international market segment at Northern Trust.

Prior to taking on this role, Biggs ran Northern’s international sales and global fund services teams in London and was responsible for sales, marketing and internally managed clients. Biggs has been at Northern since 1996.

In the year to 31 December 2003, CSTIM reported revenues of GBP7.0m and profit before tax of GBP1.1m. On acquisition, CSTIM is expected to have net assets in excess of GBP2m.

CSTIM was founded in the UK in 1998, and has offices in London, Luxembourg, Edinburgh, Jersey and Cape Town and a staff of 60 employees. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Century Australia Investments is a listed investment company established to provide investors with access to the investment style and expertise of 452 Capital. The investment objective of Century Australia is to provide long term capital growth and income by investing in quality, undervalued Australian companies. 452 Capital Pty Limited is an independent fund management company focused on the management of assets invested in the Australian share market. 452 Capital was founded in 2002 and is based in Sydney.

The move follows Insight’s recent rationalisation programme of its onshore, offshore and multi-manager product range. The transfer programme is scheduled to complete by the end of 2004.

David Norman, managing director of business partnerships at Insight, said: "We constantly review the cost and service quality of all our outsource arrangements so that we can deliver better service at lower cost to our investors. We chose The Bank of New York for their service quality and because they can provide the cost effective scaleable operational platform and functionality we need to help us achieve our ambitious targets as the new force in asset management."

This new outsource arrangement is multi-domiciled and consolidates Insight’s services in the UK, Ireland, Luxembourg and Guernsey onto a single BNY platform.

Insight Investment manages funds for institutional and retail clients across equities, bonds, property, derivatives and private equity. Insight’s assets under management as at 31 December 2003 totalled GBP69.7bn.

"We believe that Northern Trust and their dedicated insurance client servicing team is the right fit for us," said Lisa Pendergast, assistant treasurer, MGIC. "Northern Trust’s flexible technology and focus on building a relationship across products is why MGIC selected them."

MGIC, the principal subsidiary of MGIC Investment Corporation, is the US’s leading provider of private mortgage insurance coverage with $189.6bn primary insurance in force covering 1.55 million mortgages as of December 31, 2003.

Gordon Wood, chief operating officer at Abbey National Asset Managers, said: "BBH Infomediary is an exciting platform that enabled a smooth transition to our new multi-manager approach. We are confident that Infomediary will allow us to communicate efficiently with our external managers while allowing us to remain in full control of our operations. We are impressed with both the capabilities of the platform and the professionalism of BBH and look forward to a successful relationship with the firm."

BBH currently has 34 clients using the Infomediary platform, 10 of which are European organisations.

Last year the Giovannini Group asked ECSDA to take the lead in removing three of the fifteen market barriers to low-cost, cross-border settlement. A dedicated ECSDA working group, chaired by Michael Kempe of CRESTCo, was set up to address the issues.

ECSDA have agreed and published ten standards for implementation at various times between now and April 2005 to enable intraday finality (by removing Barrier 4) and to harmonise operating hours and settlement deadlines (by removing Barrier 7).

While there is a high degree of compliance by ECSDA members with some of the standards, others are met by only 50% of CSDs. This means that there will be considerable change over the next 12 months and this short time scale is an indication of the importance that all ECSDA members place on the standards.

The third, Barrier 3, concerning corporate action harmonisation, will be addressed later this year.

ECSDA plans to work closely with Europe’s central banks and the Central and Eastern European Central Securities Depositories Association. As the EU is set to expand on 1 May, agreement has to be reached both with the central banks and the CEECSDA before the new standards can be considered as final. This is expected by the end of June 2004.

Stichting Pensioenfonds UWV is the pension fund of Uitvoering Werknemersverzekeringen, the Workers Insurance Authority based in The Netherlands. The UWV pension fund was created in 2003 as a result of a merger between the pension funds of UWV, GAK Nederland B.V. and CADANS.

Nangle joins from Goldman Sachs Asset Management where he was head of offshore fund services based in London. Prior to GSAM, he held positions at UBS Global Asset Management and Bank of Scotland (Ireland).

The overall risk rating and associated individual risk exposure assessment ratings allow users to compare capital market infrastructure risk exposures across countries. The ratings are based on an absolute and comparable ratings scale, using the standard AAA to C ratings. The ratings measure capital market infrastructure risk exposures irrespective of which infrastructure organisation is present in a country or the particular methods adopted to settle and safe-keep securities.

The ratings assess local market settlement processes through a structured analysis of six risk types: asset commitment, liquidity, counterparty, asset servicing, financial and operational risks. The latest ratings show Australia, Canada, France, Singapore and Sweden as the highest rated capital market infrastructures.

All transactions in securities listed on Euronext Brussels, netted and guaranteed by LCH.Clearnet, will be eligible for the new Euroclear Bank stock exchange settlement service. Once Euronext Brussels trades are netted, LCH.Clearnet will transmit instructions on a straight-through basis to the settlement platform chosen by the trading counterparties or their clearing members. Book-entry, delivery-versus-payment, settlement will be offered in commercial bank money at Euroclear Bank and in central bank money at CIK.

Pierre Francotte, chief executive officer of Euroclear Bank, said: "This new service for Euronext Brussels trades is part of our strategy to progressively deliver centralised access for our clients to all European equity markets through their Euroclear Bank account. Similar arrangements will be extended to trades on Euronext Amsterdam and the London Stock Exchange in the coming weeks."

Andrew Cook, chief financial officer of AXIS Capital, said: "As an existing client of The Bank of New York, we look forward to expanding our strong relationship and working with the bank’s highly regarded insurance industry specialists. The bank’s commitment to quality and technological innovation has continually impressed us."

AXIS Capital is a Bermuda-based provider of specialised insurance and treaty reinsurance with locations in the United States and Europe.

Richard James, head of operations at RLAM said: "This is an important step for RLAM in shaping our retail service provision in the best way to meet the business challenges we face now and over the foreseeable future. JPMorgan's commitment to Scotland and our staff was of particular importance to us in choosing them as a partner."

JPMIS already has a very strong relationship with RLAM. Last year it was appointed to provide futures execution and integrated futures clearing and custody services. This followed the 2002 mandate from Royal London Unit Trust Managers Ltd to provide trustee and custody services for their UK unit trust business, then totalling $2.8bn. JPMIS is also custodian for Royal London Mutual Insurance Society, and trustee and custodian for the Scottish Life unit trusts.

Andrew Croft, finance director for St. James’s Place said: "We appointed State Street as our preferred provider following a rigorous competitive selection process. We look forward to building a long and rewarding relationship."

State Street inherited the fund accounting mandate from Deutsche Bank GSS, but custody was with other providers.

The selection of State Street was made after a detailed and rigorous assessment process, which was designed to ensure that the potential solution would result in improved services and consistent data, systems and processes across all of the AXA IM investment centres. One of the key criteria was how State Street would build upon and leverage the extensive knowledge and expertise of the AXA IM teams. It is understood that both The Bank of New York and BNP Paribas also reached the shortlist stage of negotiations.

Commenting on the selection, Nicolas Moreau, CEO of AXA IM said: "In 2002 we decided to focus on those areas where we have undoubted competitive advantages in order to deliver superior investment solutions to our clients. The proposal to transfer key operations functions to State Street would be a consistent strategic step because it would provide AXA IM with a sustainable competitive edge in these important support functions leading to improved services for our clients."

AXA Investment Managers is a multi-specialist asset management company within the AXA Group. AXA IM is one of the largest European-based asset managers with approximately EUR292bn under management. AXA IM employs over 2,100 people and serves clients in eleven countries.

Clearstream Banking Frankfurt has introduced an automated settlement route for OTC German Government debt transactions with LCH.Clearnet. Under the link, the routing process for settlement instructions generated by LCH.Clearnet on behalf of its members to be forwarded to Clearstream Banking Frankfurt for settlement will be automated.

Matthias Ganz, chief operating officer of Deutsche Börse Group said, "This is a further example for Clearstream's commitment to facilitate market openness and to create efficient solutions in response to customer and market needs. This new development will not only ease settlement of LCH.Clearnet transactions, but also contribute to improve the efficiency of the entire clearing and settlement industry."

According to estimates by the Money Management Institute, a trade group for private asset managers, separate-account assets should double in three years, triple in five years and reach $2trn by 2011.

Vestmark, Inc. is an enterprise software company providing managed accounts solutions to the financial services industry. Vestmark supports a range of managed account products, including traditional separately managed accounts (SMAs), multi-style portfolios (MSPs, MDAs, DMAs, etc.), and emerging unified managed accounts (UMAs).

"We selected Northern Trust because of their strong reputation and commitment to the asset servicing business, and their ability to create customised solutions that fit Lincoln Financial Group’s custody needs," said Frederick Crawford, vice president and treasurer, Lincoln Financial Group. "We’ve also been impressed over the years with their people and overall commitment to superior client service."

With headquarters in Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Group has consolidated assets of $107bn and had consolidated revenues of $5.3bn in 2003. Through its wealth accumulation and protection businesses, the company provides annuities, life insurance, 401(k) and 403(b) plans, mutual funds, managed accounts, institutional investment and financial planning and advisory services.

Improvements made over the last year include significantly better client protection against asset servicing risks; expansion in the number of markets (58) in which contractual settlement is offered; enlargement to 66 contractual income markets, with 44 at pay date; and query turnaround times tightened to 24 hours. There have also been improvements in corporate action information delivery and the monitoring of the sub-custodian network.

Chadwick will be responsible for all global risk management and compliance issues for Institutional and Investor Services and Treasury Management and Trade in Canada, the UK and Australia.

Kvaerner is a global provider of engineering and construction services, technology products and integrated solutions incorporated in Norway, employing over 35,000 staff across 30 countries.

"We had a very good experience with Northern Trust staff as they handled our transition to their firm," said John Liechty, senior vice president of MMA and president of MMA Praxis Mutual Funds. MMA Praxis, a leading religiously oriented fund family, is part of MMA (Mennonite Mutual Aid), a national stewardship organisation based in Indiana.

Kedia comes to Mellon from McKinsey & Company's Pittsburgh office, where she was a principal and worked on a number of process and productivity improvement projects for Mellon as a consulting client. Kedia will report to Allan Woods, Mellon vice chairman and chief information officer.

Kedia has worked for McKinsey since 1996. Previously she worked for Price Waterhouse in Washington, D.C.

Conover has run and established locations around the world for Northern Trust, including opening the company’s first office in Singapore. He has also held overseas management positions for The Bank of New York and Chase Manhattan Bank.

TASC is South Africa’s largest independent third party administrator and was created in 2000 from the administration division of Sanlam Investment Management. Focusing on institutional asset administration, TASC has 140 staff, and 15 clients with approximately R320bn in assets under administration.

Galante joins JPMorgan from Citigroup where he established and managed the systems and technology strategy for Citibank's custody, clearing and issuer services business as well as Smith Barney's securities operations division. He has also worked with Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers. He replaces Phil Fasano, who has already left the company.

Robert Douglass, who has served as chairman of Clearstream International and its predecessor company, Cedel International, since 1994, will become chairman emeritus and senior advisor to Clearstream International.

The chairman of the DIFX, Lynton Jones, said: "We have had detailed discussions with several of the world’s major exchanges, clearing and settlement houses over the last few months about entering into partnership for the purposes of bringing the DIFX into being. We received several extremely impressive bids, which made our decision very difficult. However, the conclusion we reached was that Euronext and AtosEuronext provide the best combination of market reach, trading system, international connectivity, experience and track record. As for the international clearing and settlement links and central counterparty services that are so important to an international market place we felt that the best potential partners for the DIFX would be LCH.Clearnet and Euroclear.

"We have therefore signed an MOU to enter into exclusive discussions with these four organisations, Euronext, AtosEuronext, LCH.Clearnet and Euroclear, for a period of two to three months. At the end of that period we expect to be able to reach agreement on a final proposal for the definitive blueprint of the DIFX, which we plan to start live trading in the early part of 2005. We are confident that working with such highly respected world class bodies will enable the DIFX to become the premier international capital market for the region."

DIFX, the first major international exchange in the Middle East, will be a fully electronic marketplace that will trade a wide range of products, including equities, bonds, funds, and derivatives.

The new rule lifts the exclusive status historically enjoyed by the national securities clearer. Wertpapiersammelbanken are specialised banks that administer securities in collective safe custody and carry out securities giro transactions, thus enabling the non-physical delivery of securities in settlement of on- and off-exchange securities transactions. Such banks are registered by the competent authorities of the respective German federal states (Länder) on the basis of the German Safe Custody Act.

Upon completion of the conversion, senior RCM operations managers and staff will join The Bank of New York in its San Francisco operations. As of December 31, 2003, RCM had approximately $32bn in assets under management and advice in its San Francisco office.

Bob Goldstein, chief operating officer of RCM, said: "After a thorough review of outsourcing alternatives, we selected The Bank of New York because they offered us a flexible solution that not only met our objectives, but also provided us with an operating platform that will meet the demands of our growing business. The bank’s outsourcing solutions further enable us to focus on our core business while bringing expenses more in line with revenues. The bank’s model is highly scaleable, and we are confident that we will continue to provide our clients with an exceptional service level."

RCM is part of the Allianz Dresdner Asset Management Group, a member of the Allianz group of companies with investment management, client servicing and operations functions in San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, and other world financial centres. RCM has approximately $48bn in worldwide assets under management and advice. State Street provides an outsourcing service to another Allianz subsidiary, PIMCO.

As a result, IFDS has named Steve Sheppard as managing director of its Luxembourg operations. Sheppard will report to John Vaughn, President of IFDS (Canada). His role will be to support the delivery of technology solutions to IFDS and State Street’s transfer agency clients throughout Europe. Sheppard joins from Churchill Insurance Group, where he was director, group IT operations. Prior to this he held senior roles at Computer Sciences Corporation, Standard Chartered Bank and Bank of America.

IFDS is the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street Corporation and DST Systems Inc.

• Turnover was EUR256.2trn, a 6% increase from EUR241.9 trillion in 2002.
• The number of netted transactions settled in Euroclear was 114m compared with 123m in 2002.
• The value of securities held by Euroclear for its clients at year-end 2003 was EUR11.9trn. Each Euroclear entity's custody business grew in 2003, with a combined increase of 9% from the EUR10.9 trillion reported for year-end 2002.
• The combined average daily value of collateral provision outstanding in Euroclear Bank and CREST rose 16% to EUR257.4bn from EUR222.5bn in 2002.

Last year McCaughey was appointed to the advisory board of COR Financial Solutions Ltd in the UK. He is also an advisor to National Custodian Services, Omgeo and Invest Northern Ireland, as well as being a director of the UK’s Securities Institute and a member of the Institute’s Chairman's Committee.

The agreement means that, in addition to servicing AAM’s existing business, BNPPSS will also gain new business: AAM’s new Dundee operation (formerly Edinburgh Fund Managers), acquired last year, will be transferred as part of the deal. BNPPSS will also provide global custody services.

Commenting on the agreement, Andrew Laing, chief operating officer at AAM, said: "We are extremely pleased to renew and extend our relationship with BNP Paribas Securities Services. Since first outsourcing to Cogent in 1997, we have extended the relationship steadily. We believe that BNP Paribas Securities Services is the partner to service us over the coming years."

Steve Nichols, head of treasury at Britannia Building Society, said: "We chose The Bank of New York after an extensive review of current and future requirements and are confident that they will prove to be an excellent choice in the roles of both issuing and paying agent and custody agent."

Britannia Building Society is a mutual building society offering mortgages, loans, savings and investments, as well as a range of home mortgage services. It is the second largest building society in the UK in terms of total consolidated assets with an investor base of over 2m members.

Bill Ireland, Mariner’s founder and chief executive officer, said: "Other service providers gave us a take-it-or-leave-it approach to our needs, whereas BNP Paribas Securities Services worked with us in all stages of product development. They were with us every step of the way. We are choosing to develop our business with partners such as BNP Paribas Securities Services that are nimble, innovative and are true specialists in their field."

Established in 2003, Mariner Financial is an Australian-owned financial services company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Mariner's primary focus is servicing Australia's growing retirement incomes market, through the provision of uniquely structured investment and retirement income solutions.

Citisoft created a formal approach to this evaluation due to the large number of variables involved in any outsourcing evaluation. Citisoft has developed several proprietary tools to assist managers in evaluating, for example, future staffing requirements under outsourced and insourced scenarios, depending upon which activities the manager might elect to outsource and how the manager anticipates its business might grow or change over time. This scenario analysis enables targeted cost projections over a specified time horizon for insourced and outsourced alternatives.

"Deutsche Börse protests against the damage done to its reputation and rejects the allegations of money laundering. Cedel International S.A., Luxembourg, Geneva Branch -which was mentioned in the report - was a branch of Cedel International S.A., Luxembourg (Cedel). It was established on 4 August 2000. At this time Cedel was not part of Deutsche Börse Group but an independent company wholly owned by around 90 international banks. Cedel held 50 percent in Clearstream International; the remaining 50 percent were held by Deutsche Börse. Deutsche Börse did not transfer funds to Cedel Geneva Branch.

"The audited annual accounts of Cedel include on the balance sheet any and all assets and liabilities of the branch which was not an operating entity. The branch was correctly mentioned in the Cedel Management Reports which - as part of Cedel's annual report – are filed with the register and as such are public. The activities of the branch were fully disclosed to the respective tax authorities. All taxes due were properly declared and paid.

"In July 2002 Deutsche Börse AG took over Cedel in the course of the full acquisition of Clearstream. Deutsche Börse acquired Cedel's stake in Clearstream and Cedel's remaining assets. The Cedel Geneva Branch was closed on 16 July 2003.

"Deutsche Börse stated it had no information from the Swiss authorities regarding their investigation.

"In 2001 a book was published alleging Clearstream of money laundering; the allegations proved to be unfounded. In July 2001 the Luxembourg state prosecutor confirmed that after almost three months of investigations by the Luxembourg authorities, no evidence supported the allegations in relation to money laundering at Clearstream."

A custody foreign exchange deal involves an investment manager, a counterparty and a custodian and is a more complicated transaction in terms of settlement than the inter-bank deals that have settled in CLS to date. CLS, established in 1996 by the industry group G20, targets the elimination of settlement risk. CLS creates a payment-versus-payment environment by linking the two parts of a trade without guaranteeing them. If one entity does not honour its part of the transaction, both payments are cancelled and settlement risk is removed.

"We selected Northern Trust because of their extensive experience and expertise in servicing the complex custody and accounting needs of US unregistered funds," said Michel Brutti, CFA at Jarislowsky, Fraser Limited.

This new dealing service enables Barclays’ customers to deal in and track their investments in a wide range of funds. As part of this major agreement, Mellon is also supplying dealing services to existing unit trust investors of Woolwich Unit Trust Managers and OEIC investors of Barclays Global Investors. Barclays continues to use L&G as their preferred supplier of tied mass market, life, pension and simple investment products.

Genoud joins BBH from State Street Bank & Trust Company in Zurich where he was chief operations officer and senior relationship manager for the Swiss client base. He started with State Street in 1995 in their Munich office, where he was responsible for the relationship management teams and operations.

Using a set of consistently applied criteria to each of the 7,500 companies rated, CGQ is a rating system designed by ISS to assist institutional investors in evaluating the quality of corporate boards and the impact their governance practices may have on performance. Ratings are calculated on the basis of eight core categories: board of directors, audit, charter and bylaw provisions, anti-takeover provisions, executive and director compensation, progressive practices, ownership, and director education. Each company is scored individually and ranked relative to its index and industry peer group.

"The ability to receive Institutional Shareholder Services' data via Northern Trust will be a wonderful tool for monitoring the corporate governance practices of the companies we are invested in," said Bill Puckett, chief investment officer for the $6.7bn Teachers' Retirement System of Oklahoma. "It will also greatly enhance our ability to develop new corporate governance policies and practices."

The new Depotbank functionality will focus on the servicing of KAGs (Kapitalanlagegesellschaften), Spezialfonds and direct investors. ABN AMRO Mellon will convert an initial book of business totalling 31 funds, with assets under custody of EUR2bn.

Michelle Grundmann has been appointed to manage the Frankfurt branch. She joins from Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, where she was chief operating officer and Geschäftsführerin of MLIM’s KAG.

Ellis was most recently sales director for Inalytics, marketing to corporate pension schemes, and prior to that head of sales with Swiss Life Asset Management, where she focused on institutional pension clients. She reports to Richard Beaven, managing director of European investor services.

John Gout will be responsible for global custody and asset administration business development across Europe with a special focus on the Netherlands, reporting to Penny Biggs, senior vice president, international sales and global fund services.

Gout’s most recent appointment was as vice president, securities country manager and relationship manager within the global transaction services division for Citibank in Switzerland.

As a senior relationship manager, Wim van Ooijen will be responsible for the ongoing development of existing client relationships in the Netherlands. He was working as a Dutch institutional investor relationship manager in the institutional banking division of KAS BANK in Amsterdam.

Walter Stampor, executive director, said: "The bank’s Internet-based information delivery platform, INFORM, will be able to meet our complex custody and securities lending requirements, and we look forward to working with the bank’s well regarded team of dedicated public fund specialists."

"By using one single provider we have been able to streamline our operation process which was previously carried out with different banks on domestic and foreign securities," said Hasse Jørgensen, chief investment officer of PFA Pension. "This has enabled us to be more time and cost efficient and incur less operational risk. Our decision to appoint JPMorgan was influenced by the commitment they have shown to addressing all of our requirements, and they have other product offerings that we will take advantage of once we have finalised a full STP automation of our basic business."

Lewis joins from Merrill Lynch, where she was managing director, marketing and communications for the securities services division. She will report to Randall Grespin, managing director and group business unit executive.

Recent industry discussions have been held within, among others, the Reference Data Coalition (REDAC) and Reference Data User Group (RDUG) task forces to use various identifiers (such as LSE’s SEDOL) linked to ISIN to achieve more efficient cross-border trading. The ANNA Service Bureau’s ISIN-MIC solution (ISIN-MIC is formally supported by ISO/TC68/SC4) leverages ANNA’s position as the recognised registration authority and maintenance agency for the ISIN and CFI (product classification) standards in implementing this standards-based solution.

Telekurs Financial, on behalf of the ANNA Service Bureau, will provide OPOL related information linking the ISO Standard Market Identifier Code (MIC) to the ISIN for any security(s) contained within the ANNA Service Bureau ISIN database. The ANNA Service Bureau database currently contains approximately 2 million ISINs, representing instruments from over 200 countries, making it the world’s most comprehensive source of ISIN and product classification (CFI) data.

ANNA is a world-wide association of numbering agencies responsible in their country for assigning ISIN and related data to all financial instruments according to ISO Standard 6166. At present ANNA counts 65 countries, including all major financial markets as direct members and 18 countries as partners. ANNA is recognised by ISO as maintenance agency and registration authority for a number of ISO standards including ISO 6166 – ISINs and ISO 10962 – and CFI, Classification of Financial instruments.

"The overall quality of the service, depth of product offering and the flexibility of the people were among the decisive factors for us. JPMorgan has shown the service commitment that we are looking for and their superior client technology provides us with a critical level of support," said David Forbes, assistant county treasurer of Lincolnshire County Council.

JPMIS confirmed that it is now pursuing more local authority business. "We are very pleased with this appointment," said Sue Curtis, UK client management executive for JPMIS in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "It is a gratifying acknowledgement of our strategic focus on building market share in the UK local government pensions arena."

Subject to final negotiations and a staff consultation period, approximately 105 staff will transfer to HSBC. HSBC expects this deal to strengthen its outsourcing proposition for the European investment management industry.

The services that will be provided to Gartmore under the proposed arrangements will include transaction processing and related foreign exchange, custody, portfolio and fund accounting, and performance measurement for Gartmore’s European institutional and retail product ranges. Migration of the work to HSBC should be completed in early 2005.

Gartmore’s decision is in support of its strategy to focus management time on managing money and client service which has led to a number of outsourcing moves, including transfer agency, custody and fund accounting, over nearly ten years.

Chris Samuel, chief operating officer at Gartmore, commented: "We have been outsourcing back office work methodically since the mid nineties in support of our strategy to focus our management time on managing money and client service. The proposed arrangements are both another major step forward in implementing this strategy as well as a rationalisation of some of our existing arrangements. The proposed partnership will clearly benefit our clients as well as Gartmore since HSBC are committed to invest in both the technology and people needed to ensure that Gartmore’s services remain world-class while providing a comprehensive and attractive proposal to meet Gartmore’s cost and risk reduction requirements. As important as anything in Gartmore’s considerations was HSBC’s commitment to invest in people and so provide enhanced opportunities for transferring employees."

Lexicon Partners Limited acted as financial adviser to Gartmore in this transaction.

Gartmore Group is an international asset management business owned by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company of Columbus, Ohio. Gartmore Group has assets under management of £50.3bn (US$90.1bn) as at 31 December 2003, and its main offices are in London, Tokyo, Philadelphia, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Stockholm and Jersey.

BBH will service the fund out of Boston and will be responsible for $100m of assets. BBH has acted as custodian and fund accounting provider since the fund’s inception in 1990.

Dr Petra Zamagna, head of benefits finance & asset management for Aventis, and chair of the investment committee for Aventis Pension Trust, said: "We are delighted to build our relationship with State Street to include custody, accounting, and performance and analytics. State Street has clearly demonstrated its commitment to providing Depotbank services and really excels in client service and innovation in the custody services and asset management services. State Street’s thirty years in Germany gives them an in-depth understanding of the market here and of the regulatory environment."

Dietmar Schmid, member of the board of managing directors of ING BHF-BANK, said: "Within the commercial alliance, the provision of global custody services for ING BHF-BANK allows us to provide more comprehensive service and reporting capabilities to our institutional clients, particularly in the depot banking business. We are impressed with the strength and depth of The Bank of New York’s management team and their invaluable experience in providing global custody support to major organisations around the world."

Tim Keaney, BNY executive vice president and head of Europe, said: "The latest global custody appointment by ING BHF-BANK further cements the close relationship between our two organisations, a relationship which continues to provide real benefits to the growing base of clients we are serving together. This appointment demonstrates the benefit of combining The Bank of New York’s global reach with the local focus and market knowledge of ING Group."

Avon Pension Fund is the local government pension scheme for the Avon area, administered by Bath & North East Somerset Council. Advised by Mercer Investment Consulting, Avon undertook a review of its custodial arrangements before handing ABN AMRO Mellon the contract, effective from April 2004.

"ABN AMRO Mellon ranked highly on the key criteria of value for money and service commitment," said Tony Worth, Avon Pension Fund investments officer.

Andrés Ergas, investment manager of Banchile, said: "The Bank of New York will enable us to take advantage of new business opportunities and offer an expanded suite of products and services to our mutual fund customers, as well as optimise the procedures involved in stock and bond purchasing and management."

"We selected The Bank of New York as our new administrator because we want to provide our investors with the highest level of client service," said Patricia Young, a founding partner of NewMarket Capital Partners. "Their new technology and enhanced reporting capabilities are superior to others available in the market and give us a critical level of support that enhances our client relationships."

In 2003 BNY bought International Fund Administration Ltd., a specialist alternative investments administrator.

Terence Toth, executive vice president and global head of quantitative management, securities lending, transition management and commission recapture, was named president of NTGI. He will join Northern's Management Committee and report to chairman Bill Osborn. Toth joined Northern in 1982. He left the company in 1986 to become managing director for Banker's Trust global securities lending unit, a position he held until 1994 when he rejoined Northern Trust.

It was also announced that Steve Fradkin, executive vice president and head of Northern's Finance Group, has been named to the additional position of chief financial officer. He will join Northern's Management Committee and report to Osborn. The CFO position was held by vice chairman Perry Pero, who will continue as vice chairman and a member of the Management Committee.

In addition, Peter Rossiter, executive vice president, previously Northern's general counsel and currently head of the corporate risk management area, has announced his intention to leave Northern at the end of February and return to the law practice at Schiff Hardin LLP, the firm with which he was associated prior to joining Northern in 1992. Pero will add Rossiter's responsibilities to his current responsibilities as chairman of the Asset and Liability Policy Committee and head of credit risk management.

The TransConstellation Academy will be launched in February 2004. In partnership with the Solvay Business School, a leading business school in Belgium, TransConstellation's first initiative will be to develop the skills and knowledge that are needed by these entities, which are not traditionally found within the scope of most school and university programmes. The academy will offer a certificate programme in financial transaction services.

Kirby’s previous employers include Deutsche Boerse, Reuters (twice), GSTP AG and SWIFT.

The key feature is an open order routing platform that enables users to select where they want to settle and whether to use or not Clearstream’s centralised settlement and custody services. Fund distributors can choose a direct settlement and custody functionality with the fund, or use their own existing settlement processes and keep custody with the local CSD, or to utilise the Clearstream settlement and custody facilities. The initial target markets of France and Germany represent the largest domestic fund markets in Europe and account for almost 40% of the market.

In late 2002, Clearstream acquired the Filinks company with its FORS order routing technology. These two elements have now been integrated and will combine to deliver the new multi-domestic services to the investment fund industry. The new service should be rolled out this summer.

"JPMIS offered the best combination of products, service and price," said Paul Tunnacliffe, chairman of the HIPS trustees and company secretary of Hanson PLC. "Hanson already has a long-standing and successful relationship with JPMorgan and the trustees were pleased to be able to call on this internal reference as to both quality and delivery."

BNY will provide an integrated custody and fund accounting service to Standard Life Investments’ new multi-manager open ended investment company (OEIC). The bank will also provide software solutions to support fund supermarket processing on Standard Life’s open architecture platform.

William Littleboy, operations director of Standard Life Investments, said, "We believe The Bank of New York will provide us with the best custody and accounting service for our new multi-manager offering. This will allow us to continue delivering outstanding levels of service to our clients."

State Street is the first lending agent in Canada to provide a Canadian dollar cash collateral re-investment option. State Street currently manages securities lending cash collateral in four currencies: US dollar, euro, Sterling and Australian dollar.

Commenting on their decision, Caroline Forsyth, group pensions manager for DS Smith Group Pension said: "We are looking forward to State Street meeting all of our requirements as we migrate to a new investment fund structure with one provider acting as our global custodian. We look forward to a long and rewarding relationship with them."