2005 NEWS archive

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22DEC05: Northern Trust is making a number of senior management changes in London.

Penny Biggs, who joined Northern Trust in 1996, takes up the newly created role of head of global corporate & institutional services sales, effective 1st January 2006. In this role, she will be responsible for directing Northern Trust's institutional custody, fund administration and asset servicing sales efforts worldwide, and will continue to oversee marketing for Northern Trust's international asset servicing business. She will remain based in London and will report to Rick Waddell, president of corporate & institutional services.

Gregg Behrens becomes head of corporate & institutional services for Europe, Middle East & Africa. He will oversee business management and corporate governance activities relating to Northern Trust's asset servicing group in the EMEA region. Behrens, who joined Northern Trust in 1974, will report to Steve Potter, group head of Northern's international business segment.

Wilson Leech, who joined Northern Trust in 2004, will become head of global fund services (GFS) worldwide, a newly created position, effective 31st March 2006. Leech will lead the global development of Northern’s business with investment management organisations. He will have direct responsibility for all GFS business activities and will report to Steve Potter.

Joyce St Clair will retain her current responsibilities for overseeing the Baring Financial Services Group integration, reporting to Tim Theriault, president of world wide operations and technology group. Effective 1st January 2006, she will add to her responsibilities by becoming deputy head of Northern Trust's international business segment. In this capacity, she will take on broader responsibilities in terms of infrastructure development and strategic planning for the International business segment, working with Steve Potter.

22DEC05: State Street has won a mandate to provide custody and fund accounting services to IndependentAge, a UK charity that helps elder people in need to remain independent by providing financial help. The charity has $220m in assets under management.

IndependentAge already subscribes to the charity fund service of WM Performance Services. “We have been very pleased with WM’s charity service, and we are delighted to expand the range of services we are receiving from State Street,” said Jonathan O’Shea, finance director of IndependentAge. “We look forward to realising the benefits of an integrated service offering which includes custody, fund accounting and performance measurement under the same umbrella.”

22DEC05: Euroclear France, the central securities depository of France, is to reduce the fees it charges clients for using its SBI post-trade confirmation service. Euroclear claims that the new tariffs, which start on 1 January 2006, will cut users’ costs by an average of 10pct, generating total savings for SBI clients of EUR 1.2m.

SBI – Sociétés de Bourse Intermédiaires – enables brokers on Euronext Paris to confirm to custodians the execution of their clients’ trades. It also provides for the automatic clearing and settlement of these transactions. Since the beginning of 2005, almost 17m transactions have been processed on the SBI system. 

21DEC05: At last, some concrete evidence that pension fund pooling is more than a distant dream of consultants and custodians. Northern Trust, one of the pioneers of pooling, is to provide custody and fund administration services to Univest, the new pension asset pooling vehicle launched by Unilever. The fund will be seeded with more than EUR2bn ($2.3bn) at launch. Northern Trust will also act as Management Company to Univest.

Univest is thought to be the first fully tax-transparent, cross border pension pooling vehicle launched for a multinational corporation in the form of a Luxembourg-domiciled Fonds Commun de Placement (FCP). The FCP – like the Dublin-domiciled Common Contractual Fund – is an approved vehicle that provides complete tax transparency for multinational corporations seeking to offer their individual, underlying country pension plans an opportunity to access a broad array of pooled investment options, including global equity mandates.

Northern Trust first launched a vehicle for cross-border pension pooling in 2001, in the form of an Irish unit trust, and is currently implementing additional tax-transparent vehicles in both Dublin and Luxembourg, designed for both multinational companies and investment managers.

21DEC05: The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) and the European Securities Forum (ESF) have established the Financial Markets Federation, which has been set up with the intention of shaping the future structure and form of closer co-operation between financial markets trade associations.

The council of the Financial Markets Federation will initially consist of the chairmen of ICMA and ESF, Hans-Jörg Rudloff and Joan Beck, and the chief executives of the two associations. Associations that join the Financial Markets Federation can be similarly represented on the council.

21DEC05: Northern Trust has made two senior pooling appointments to its asset servicing business in London. Louise Sylva has joined as a senior relationship manager for multinational clients and Karen Zeeb has joined as a pooling product manager.

Sylva joins from PricewaterhouseCoopers in London where she was a senior manager responsible for developing and delivering non-audit services to some of the largest UK pension schemes.

Zeeb was previously head of account management for brokerage and clearing services at Pershing Limited, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York.

16DEC05: CRESTCo, the UK settlement system operator owned by Euroclear, expects to deliver GBP10m of savings to clients from new tariff reductions, effective 1 May 2006.

Specifically, CRESTCo will:

decrease its fee by more than 60 pct, from 25p to 9p, to process an electronic order-book transaction before netting;

redefine the entire volume-discount structure and introduce a new, high-volume 90 pct discount band, which will reduce the cost of processing a gross transaction to as little as 1p;

reduce the annual member-account charge to GBP1 for all member accounts, irrespective of volumes (compared with today’s practice of charging GBP5 for each member account, which falls to GBP 1 after 5,000 accounts); and

increase its tariff for corporate-action processing by about GBP1m.

CRESTCo implemented tariff reductions said to total GBP11m earlier in 2005.

16DEC05: SEI has been selected by Kinetics Advisers to provide fund administration for their offshore hedge fund in the United States. Under the agreement, SEI will provide administration, accounting and investor servicing.

Leonid Polyakov, managing director and co-founder of Kinetics Advisers, said: “We looked at all of the top-tier administrators, and chose SEI based on their combination of accounting and regulatory and compliance expertise as well as their global reach,” said “Their team brings a unique combination of industry expertise and technology support that is ideal for us and our investors as we continue to expand.”

14DEC05: Just a day after JPMorgan announced a transition management deal with the same client, WM Performance Services, the European performance measurement division of State Street, announced that it has been appointed by Doctors Pension Funds Services B.V.

WM will provide Doctors Pension Funds Services with performance measurement for its two funds on a monthly basis and on an aggregate level, and will provide additional information for their internal board reporting. The services build upon an existing relationship between Doctors Pension Funds Services and Princeton Financial Systems, a State Street subsidiary that provides Doctors Pension Funds Services with its PAM client/server portfolio management and accounting systems.

“We have strong connections with State Street and are delighted to build upon them with this mandate for WM,” said Bert Bos, chief executive officer of Doctors Pension Funds Services. “Performance measurement and analysis is part of good corporate governance, and we believe WM can add significant value to our funds.”

14DEC05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has expanded its US sales team for investment managers. William Stanton will run the team responsible for selling a full range of fund services and related products such as fund accounting, fund administration and financial reporting. Stanton will report to Christopher Lynch, head of western hemisphere sales for securities processing and securities lending.

Stanton has more than 20 years of sales and operations experience in financial services. Most recently, he was head of a US client management team focused on investment managers at The Bank of New York.

14DEC05: Citigroup has finalised the transfer of AEGON Asset Management UK’s back-office functions, following successful due diligence and contract negotiations.

The deal was originally announced in March 2005, when AEGON Asset Management UK entered into exclusive negotiations to transfer its fund accounting and administration functions to Citigroup. Seventy-five AEGON staff have become Citigroup employees, based in the bank’s Edinburgh offices.

AEGON manages and administers over GBP40bn on behalf of retail, insured and institutional clients. 

13DEC05: F&C Netherlands B.V., one of the top five pension fund asset managers in the Netherlands, has appointed ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services B.V. to manage client and fund administration activities for their 181 institutional clients in The Netherlands. The mandate is an expansion of the existing relationship between the two companies, which was established in 1998.

As part of the mandate, 22 F&C Netherlands client and fund administrators have joined ABN AMRO Mellon’s team based in the Amsterdam office.

Henk Breukink, country head and director of F&C Netherlands B.V., said: “This appointment reflects a natural evolution of the excellent partnership we have had with ABN AMRO Mellon since 1998. It is also further recognition of the success and quality we attribute to their expertise in the Dutch marketplace, their local language team and offices, and their ability to anticipate and deliver on our investment requirements. It provides us with the scale we require, and the scope to meet our future needs. Over the last year we have worked superbly together to create a tailored solution that integrates seamlessly with our back-office systems, and we believe it is second-to-none in the marketplace.”

13DEC05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has signed a contract with Martin Currie Investment Management Limited for the provision of middle office and fund accounting services. Martin Currie is based in Edinburgh and manages approximately GBP10bn of assets. The final transition of services, after extensive user acceptance testing, is planned for completion in the third quarter of 2006.

Ralph Campbell, chief financial officer at Martin Currie, said: “Just as investment products have become more specialised, so has investment administration. After careful due diligence, we are pleased to have been able to find a partner in BNP Paribas, whose qualities so closely reflect our view of our future operational needs. We are looking forward to working with them, and to giving our customers an even better service as a result.”

13DEC05: State Street has expanded its relationship with the First Eagle Funds to include custody services for USD27bn in assets. State Street has provided accounting services for the funds since 1987.

13DEC05: Jamie Ball, head of capital markets and managing director at ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services, has announced her retirement from ABN AMRO Mellon, and the industry, with effect from January 31 2006.

Ball’s 15-year career with Mellon began in 1991, running treasury and foreign exchange. In 1992 she assumed full responsibility for all offshore international securities lending and incorporated the additional international lending when the merger took place with Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company in 1994.

Managing all non-US securities lending for both fixed income and equities, Ball was appointed in 2003 as managing director and head of capital markets for ABN AMRO Mellon.

13DEC05: AIB/BNY Securities Services (Ireland) Limited is to create 200 new jobs in Cork. The joint venture between Allied Irish Banks, plc and The Bank of New York will cement its expansion plans with an investment of over EUR13.5m in its Irish operations. AIB/BNY is one of the largest fund administrators in Ireland, with USD162bn of funds under administration. The joint venture currently employs 495 people in its operations at the IFSC in Dublin.

13DEC05: JPMorgan has been awarded the transition management mandate for Doctors Pension Funds in the Netherlands. Following a review, the EUR11.7bn pension fund is shifting from internal to external fund management.

Doctors Pension Funds consists of Stichting Pensioenfonds voor Huisartsen, a scheme for general practitioners, and Stichting Pensioenfonds Medische Specialisten, a scheme for medical specialists. The assets in the two funds will be managed by 30 external fund managers. As part of the restructuring, EUR9bn in government bonds has already been transitioned. When the full restructuring is complete, it will be the largest transition management transaction handled by JPMorgan to date.

Bert Bos, chief executive officer of Doctors Pension Funds, said: “Our experience of working with JPMorgan, which has acted as our global custodian for many years, and our confidence in its operational efficiencies, sophisticated analytics and superior liquidity provision convinced us that they were the right firm to manage the complex restructuring of our pension fund investments.”

09DEC05: Euroclear will return EUR45m to the clients of Euroclear Bank, the largest-ever rebate in the bank’s history. Tariffs will also be cut across Euroclear Bank services in 2006, ranging from securities lending and borrowing to services for domestic and international debt.

09DEC05: Stichting Pensioenfonds De Eendragt has chosen KAS BANK as its global custodian. De Eendragt takes care of the pension schemes for 16 companies in the papermaking and graphic industry. It has approximately 10,000 participants, of which 7,000 are dormant. The pension fund’s invested capital amounts to over EUR800m.

Philip Menco, director of Pensioenfonds De Eendragt, said: “We have chosen KAS BANK due to the increasing complexity of our portfolio, which is partly related to the hedging of interest and indexation risks by means of derivatives. Partly due to this development, detailed online information is required, which KAS BANK offers by means of KAS-Web”.

09DEC05: Société Générale Securities Services has appointed Mathieu Maurier as head of its South African securities branch. He will be based in Johannesburg and will report to Etienne Deniau, deputy head of investors services at Société Générale Securities Services in Paris.

Maurier joined Société Générale in 1994. He has spent over 11 years within Société Générale’s securities services department, holding various positions from operations and product development to relationship and senior sales management.

08DEC05: Northern Trust will be hoping that its latest appointment for the Netherlands proves more successful than its last. It has appointed Eric Pouwels as head of asset servicing business development for the Dutch institutional market.

Pouwels’ background is in information technology sales to financial institutions. He joins Northern Trust from MarketXS, a Dutch provider of real-time market data solutions. He will initially be based in London, relocating in 2006 to the Netherlands in line with Northern Trust’s plans to open an office in Amsterdam. This, of course, was the plan with Pouwels’ predecessor, John Gout, who joined in February 2004 but left a year later, partly in frustration at Northern’s failure to open the Dutch office.

07DEC05: BISYS, the specialist outsourcing provider, has announced new relationships with two fund complexes: Arrivato Advisors, based in New York, and Bjurman, Barry & Associates of Los Angeles.

For Arrivato, BISYS will provide services to support the launch of a new product to the US market. The Arrivato Dow Jones US Target Date Funds are the first indexed, life-cycle funds specific to the US market. BISYS will serve as sub-administrator to these portfolios, providing transfer agency, fund accounting and compliance services.

Bjurman, Barry, & Associates will take BISYS' full outsourcing service, including fund accounting, fund administration, transfer agency, distribution, legal, regulatory and compliance services. The firm recently appointed Brown Brothers Harriman as custodian and securities lending agent.

07DEC05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Ani Prado as a sales and relationship manager, covering Swiss institutional investors. She is based in Zurich and reports locally to Garrick Smith, location manager for BNP Paribas Securities Services in Zurich, and globally to Dietmar Roessler, head of institutional investors coverage for Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland.

Prado joins from Bank Julius Baer & Co., where she spent nine years, most recently as deputy head of business development.

05DEC05: There will be more than a little disappointment within HSBC and JPMorgan at the news that Hermes Pensions Management Ltd, the GBP60bn UK asset manager, has selected The Bank of New York to enter exclusive due diligence discussions with a view to providing investment operations outsourcing services in the UK.

The proposed deal would involve the complete migration of the Hermes Pensions Management investment operations functions to BNY’s SmartSource strategic IT platform and centralised outsourcing business model. The bank would assume responsibility for operational functions including trade support, asset servicing, data management and position keeping.

Gerard Quirke, chief operating officer of Hermes, said: “The Bank of New York consistently demonstrated that it understands the complexity of investment administration and the servicing requirements of our major pension fund clients. We are confident that the bank will provide us with a strong and cost-effective platform, allowing us to focus on our core activities and mitigate operational risk.”

Market observers had thought that HSBC had all but wrapped up the deal, and there are suggestions that the final pitches were key to the decision, with HSBC performing badly. JPMorgan, which always appeared to be the outsider, will be keen to hold on to its existing custody mandate from Hermes, which is not currently part of the proposed deal. Hermes was advised by Ernst & Young.

01DEC05: Frank Bisignano, chief executive officer of Citigroup’s global transaction services business, is leaving to join JPMorgan Chase as its chief administrative officer. Alan MacDonald, currently chief operating officer in the global banking division, will replace Bisignano on a temporary basis.

01DEC05: HSBC Securities Services has made three trustee appointments at its London and Edinburgh offices. Bob Southgate has been appointed senior manager, trustee and depositary services - client relations. Kirsten Haggarty becomes senior trustee and depositary manager in charge of HSBC’s recently opened Edinburgh trustee office. Haggarty has held a number of operational client management positions and has worked in the investment and trustee industry for 16 years, most recently for State Street. Ros Clark comes in as senior trustee and depositary technical manager. Clark joins from the Investment Management Association.

30NOV05: If you haven’t been paying attention, you might have thought that Wachovia Corporation, the fourth largest bank in the US, had sold its trust and custody business to State Street in 1999 – end of story. But no: after its 2001 merger with First Union, Wachovia found itself lumbered with another trust and custody business. After four years of procrastination, it has finally reached a similar conclusion, and has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its corporate trust, institutional custody, document custody, and structured finance trust service units to U.S. Bancorp.

The transaction has an initial sale price of USD720m and is expected to generate a fourth quarter 2005 net pre-tax gain of approximately USD425-450m, or USD185-200m after-tax. Wachovia also may realise up to USD80m pre-tax, depending upon the level of business retained during the 12-month period following the completion of the transaction.

Wachovia will retain its securities lending unit, a business it entered two years ago with the acquisition of Metropolitan West Securities.

30NOV05: Northern Trust has been awarded the mandate to be the exclusive provider of global custody and performance measurement services to the GBP365m Lloyd’s Superannuation Fund. The fund was advised by Watson Wyatt in its custody review.

25NOV05: HSBC and United Overseas Bank (UOB) of Singapore have agreed that HSBC will buy out UOB’s stake in the two banks’ 50:50 shareholder services joint venture, Asia Fund Services Pte Ltd (AFS), for S$4.5m (US$2.6m).

Upon completion, AFS will be 100 per cent held by HSBC Institutional Trust Services (BVI) Limited and renamed HSBC Securities Services (Transfer Agency) Pte Limited. The transaction is subject to regulatory and other approvals, and is expected to be completed by 30 November 2005.

AFS, which offers shareholder services in Singapore, was established in February 2004 as a joint venture between HSBC and UOB. Under the joint venture, the two companies shared the cost of developing a new share registry service and reporting system catering specifically to the needs of institutional fund services clients in Singapore.

The decision for HSBC to fully own AFS was mutually agreed between HSBC and UOB. HSBC intends to roll out the system globally to all its fund administration clients. UOB will continue to use AFS services after it is transferred to full HSBC ownership.

25NOV05: The Bank of New York has appointed Robert Darmanin as head of European custody and pensions. Darmanin moves to his new role from the bank’s investment management banking division based in New York where he headed up corporate finance activities, business development and the overall relationship with investment management clients. He will be based in London and reports to Stephen Richardson, executive vice president, head of investor services Europe. 

Darmanin’s career with the bank began when the company acquired JP Morgan’s custody business where he was responsible for its institutional funds group. Prior to that, he was head of worldwide sales, service and product management at Bank of America, and was instrumental in the implementation of its global custody operation.

24NOV05: HSBC Securities Services has made two appointments in Europe.

John Murphy joins as head of business implementation for the strategic outsourcing services function. Murphy previously worked at Citigroup, with programme management responsibility for outsourced clients. Prior to joining Citigroup, he held senior operational and programme management positions in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe with State Street.

Phil Robinson has been appointed head of strategic development. Before joining HSBC, he worked with global financial markets consultancy, m.a. partners, where he specialised in enterprise system architecture and strategy delivery.

Both report to Richard Godfrey, head of strategic outsourcing.

24NOV05: NASD has fined State Street Global Markets USD1.4m for violations relating to the reporting of corporate and municipal bond trades. State Street was cited for failing to report thousands of corporate bond trades to NASD's Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) and hundreds of municipal bond trades to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) over a 17-month period. NASD also cited State Street for supervisory deficiencies relating to corporate and municipal bond trade reporting.

The USD1.4m sanction represents the largest fine imposed to date by NASD against a single firm for fixed income trade reporting violations. State Street neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of NASD's findings.

23NOV05: The strategic alliance between Nordea and The Bank of New York has recorded its first win, securing the mandate as global custodian for the USD7bn Swedish AP7 Pension Fund.

Peter Norman, executive president of AP7, said: “We selected Nordea and The Bank of New York because we were very impressed by the joint offering that they presented. We have a need for a robust global custody solution to address the needs of the fund and we are confident that their appointment gives us this.”

23NOV05: Joël Mérère, the current chief executive officer of Euroclear France, is to become executive director in charge of international public policy, reporting to Pierre Francotte, chief executive officer of Euroclear SA/NV. Mérère will continue in his role as a member of the Euroclear executive committee. He will also become vice chairman of the Euroclear France board of directors.

Pierre Slechten, currently managing director and head of the product management division at Euroclear SA/NV, will become the new chief executive officer of Euroclear France. He is already a Euroclear France board member. Pierre Yves Goemans, currently director of marketing and sales support in Euroclear’s commercial division, will replace Slechten.

These changes will take effect on 1 March 2006.

23NOV05: SEI, a provider of asset management services and investment technology solutions, announced today that Barry O’Rourke has been appointed as managing director of SEI’s Dublin-based fund accounting, fund administration and shareholder services business.

He joins from HSBC Alternative Fund Services (formerly Bank of Bermuda) where he was director and head of alternative fund administration for their Irish-based securities services business.

SEI’s Dublin-based global fund services business was established in November 1995 and services over 600 alternative funds with approximately EUR59bn of assets.

22NOV05: As predicted, The Bank of New York is beginning to broaden its roster of vice chairmen following the retirement of Al Griffith, the sole vice chairman, in the summer. The board has elected Bruce Van Saun, chief financial officer, as vice chairman of the holding company and the bank; and Don Monks, head of global operations and technology, as vice chairman of the bank. Both have been serving most recently as senior executive vice presidents.

Surprisingly, Joe Velli, another senior executive vice president and head of the bank’s single largest revenue generator, BNY Securities, misses out on promotion, further confusing the succession planning process as the market tries to work out what will happen when Tom Renyi, chairman and CEO, eventually retires.

17NOV05: State Street has been appointed by the California State Automobile Association (CSAA) to provide investment services, including investment accounting, for its $4bn of general account assets.

“We chose State Street because of its expertise in providing insurance accounting and its ability to integrate this with a wide array of investment servicing that will meet our members’ needs,” said Courtney Jones, manager of investment accounting and cash operations for CSAA. “Another factor in their selection was the success of our existing relationship with their asset management arm, State Street Global Advisors.”

CSAA has been a client of State Street Global Advisors since 1997 and a licensee of Princeton Financial Systems’ PAM for Securities accounting system for ten years. Princeton Financial is a wholly owned subsidiary of State Street.

17NOV05: SG GSSI, the securities services business of Société Générale, says that ING Wholesale Banking has successfully implemented outsourcing of its back-office trade processing and settlement activities of its London-booked international cash equities business.

The service is now fully operational and means that ING London’s equities trade-processing and settlement of cash equities, currently trading on 56 different markets, is now handled completely by SG GSSI. ING transferred 17 staff to SG GSSI as part of the arrangement.

Erik Dralans, Head of ops/IT Banking for ING, said: “This arrangement is the ideal solution for ING. There is currently no other provider that is capable of offering this service at the level required by a company like ING. We have transferred ING staff to SG GSSI giving it access to our highly experienced settlement professionals and further expanding its team. Through SG GSSI's development of settlements technology infrastructure, this agreement will offer us the ability to carry out a high volume of transactions efficiently, whilst also allowing us to offer competitive variable costs to our international cash equity business.”

16NOV05: Changes afoot for State Street in Europe. Jeff Conway, who has been running investor services for UK, Northern Europe, Middle East and South Africa, is returning to Boston to take up a new position as head of the executive operations and strategy and investor relations groups. Peter Baker will take on part of his role as the head of investor services in the UK, Middle East and South Africa, whilst the businesses in the Netherlands and the Nordic region will now report into Tim Caverly, head of investor services in Continental Europe. As a result, Rod Ringrow, managing director of investor services in the Netherlands, will report to Caverly.

Baker moved to London 18 months ago to run the London-based pensions and collective investment schemes servicing business, having previously been managing director of State Street Australia for three years.

16NOV05: Investors Bank & Trust Company, which enjoys a very strong reputation for client service, is to open a London office. The bank has appointed Nick Wright, formerly with Northern Trust, to head up the office, which will primarily focus on sales and relationship management. IBT already has a custody operation in Dublin with some 250 staff.

16NOV05: Mellon Transition Management Services has appointed John Egar to the position of vice president, marketing, Canada. Egar, who will be based in Toronto, will have overall responsibility for building a strong sales team and developing strategies to support the investment and transition management needs of CIBC Mellon and Mellon clients based in Canada.

16NOV05: SG Global Securities Services for Investors, the securities services business of Societe Generale, has appointed Walter Koller as head of investment banking services in the United States. Koller will be responsible for developing the securities back office outsourcing business, targeting banks and broker/dealers in the United States.

Koller spent the last 17 years with Fiserv Securities Inc. and its predecessor, BHC Securities in Philadelphia. He served as chief executive officer from 2003 and formerly served as COO and CIO.

16NOV05: Northern Trust has been selected to provide a full range of core global custody, compliance monitoring and performance analysis services to the EUR400m pension scheme of Dutch food retailer Laurus.

In addition, the Laurus Pension Fund awarded Northern Trust Global Investments the transition management assignment to restructure the assets into a new investment manager structure.

Dick Kamp, Pensions Manager at Laurus, said: “Having reviewed several global custodians, we chose Northern Trust because of the quality of its offering and its willingness to be flexible to meet our requirements. After the initial selection, we subsequently decided to employ Northern’s transition management group to restructure the assets, which occurred seamlessly. Being able to work with one provider on both aspects turned out to be a major benefit for us. We are impressed by Northern Trust’s client focus and its technological strength, thanks to which we are now able to consolidate our reporting and analysis requirements, thereby reducing risk and administrative inefficiencies.”

15NOV05: Winterthur Life UK Ltd has appointed Citigroup as the preferred service provider for fund administration, custody and related services. This agreement will see Winterthur Life UK Ltd transfer its fund accounting and administration functions to Citigroup’s Edinburgh funds platform. The transition is expected to take place in the third quarter of 2006.

Mike Kellard, chief executive officer at Winterthur Life UK Ltd, said: “We are very excited about developing our partnership with Citigroup, with whom we have worked closely in a number of areas over the years. They have demonstrated a sound understanding of our business needs and a clear vision for the future. Their ambition in this market, and their commitment to Edinburgh as the base for this expansion in the UK, makes them the perfect candidate to support our own business model.”

Winterthur Life UK Ltd manages around GBP7bn on behalf of retail, insured and institutional clients. It is part of the Winterthur Group, which is owned by Credit Suisse.

15NOV05: JPMorgan has launched JPMorgan Private Equity Fund Services (JPM PEFS). The new business unit will offer a full suite of outsourced fund administration services to private equity firms and institutional limited partners.

PEFS will provide middle and back office outsourcing of fund administration services such as fund and partnership accounting, tax support and comprehensive reporting services to private equity firms and limited partners. JPMorgan also provides complementary services to the private equity community including transaction advisory, cash management, credit products, escrow, custody, foreign exchange and derivatives.

PEFS starts life with more than 100 professionals with experience in private equity accounting and operations.

11NOV05: Northern Trust has appointed Nirup Krishnamurthy as executive vice president and chief technology officer. Krishnamurthy, previously vice president and chief information officer of UAL Corporation, will be based in Chicago and will report to Timothy Theriault, president, worldwide operations and technology at Northern.

10NOV05: Fortis has signed an agreement to acquire Chicago-based O’Connor & Company, a provider of clearing services on US equity, futures and options markets. Fortis will combine its existing Chicago clearing operations with O’Connor, more than tripling its size and presence in this market.

O’Connor & Company president and CEO William Floersch will become CEO of the combined organisation. It will operate under the O’Connor name until full integration of the two firms is completed, after which it will assume the Fortis name. The two firms together will employ approximately 170 people in the US.

07NOV05: Here’s a rarity – a UK pension fund mandate for Citigroup. The GBP2bn Lothian Pension Fund has appointed Citi to provide custody and stock lending services for all assets, excluding UK equities. The appointment was made at the end of The Bank of New York’s five-year contact.

Lothian Pension Fund said: “Citigroup is a significant provider of global custody and stock lending services with an extensive proprietary sub-custodian network. We were particularly impressed by Citigroup’s cost effective and secure solutions to our custody and related services needs, as well its proactive approach to ensuring a consistently high quality of service.”

01NOV05: Not entirely surprisingly, Mellon’s outsourcing deal with F&C Asset Management has collapsed. F&C announced today that it has discontinued its project to outsource the former ISIS Asset Management operational functions to Mellon.

The news will come not only as a significant blow to Mellon’s international aspirations, but also as a disappointment to JPMorgan, which had signed an outsourcing agreement with ISIS before the 2004 merger with F&C.

Since reaching heads of agreement with Mellon in November 2004, F&C and Mellon have been conducting due diligence and, more recently, contractual negotiations. The decision to cease the project has been reached following a failure to agree satisfactory contractual terms.

Alain Grisay, chief executive officer designate of F&C, said: “Our business is about delivering performance and high standards across our client services. We were only ever prepared to proceed with this outsourcing project on the basis that we would be completely satisfied that the terms would be firmly in the interests of all of our stakeholders: staff, clients and shareholders. We were unable to reach such a position. We are now undertaking an orderly professional disengagement from this project.”

Mellon will retain the original contract, signed in 2003, to service GBP52bn of F&C assets. Jack Klinck, Mellon vice-chairman and president, investment manager solutions, said: “At Mellon we have been working diligently to conclude the final contractual terms since the heads of agreement were signed and are disappointed that we could not mutually reach agreement on the scope of services, price and risk. We will focus on other opportunities in what we believe continues to be a growing market. Mellon remains fully committed to the outsourcing marketplace which is still core to our future growth.” 

01NOV05: The Bank of New York has appointed two new managers to its hedge fund administration team. Michael Young heads hedge fund relationship management and Manzar Ahmed has been appointed as head of hedge fund administration sales in Europe. Both report to David Aldrich, managing director, head of securities industry banking, Europe.

Young joins from BNY’s Dublin-based joint venture, AIB/BNY, and has previously held posts at Eagle Star Life and JP Morgan Chase. Ahmed joins from Linedata Services Asset Management, where he launched the company’s compliance software products in the UK. Previously, he held positions with Lazard Asset Management and Schroders.

01NOV05: Lloyds TSB Group Pension Schemes have extended their investment services relationship with State Street. Under the terms of a new five-year agreement, State Street will provide custody, fund accounting, securities lending and reporting. WM Performance Services will continue to provide performance measurement. The schemes’ assets are currently valued at GBP11bn.

“We are very happy to reappoint State Street as our investment services provider,” said Colin Grindle, head of pensions at Lloyds TSB. “The level of support has been first-class, and we have been particularly pleased with their levels of interaction and willingness to partner with us. In particular, the bespoke reporting State Street provides has helped us significantly streamline our back office operations.”

28OCT05: State Street has been selected by Charles Schwab Investment Management to provide investment services, including accounting, custody and securities lending, to the Schwab and Laudus funds. The fund complexes represent more than 67 funds in total and USD140bn in assets.

“Our goal is to move from a complex structure of several outside vendor relationships to a simpler one, consolidating to gain efficiency,” said George Pereira, chief financial officer of CSIM. “The new fund accounting and custody structure we have implemented will offer numerous benefits, including a simpler and more scalable operating structure, a more efficient shareholder reporting process and tighter risk management. State Street excelled in all aspects of the competitive bid process and is the best choice to serve CSIM's needs going forward.”

28OCT05: Neil Coxhead has joined Citigroup’s global transaction services group as a vice president and client relationship manager for UK managed funds. He will report to Kamal Jandu and will be based in London.

Coxhead joins from The Bank of New York, where he held various positions including senior relationship manager and several management roles within the bank's funds business. 

28OCT05: Citigroup has now confirmed that Ken Back has joined as managing director of strategic solutions, EMEA, in the securities services business. He reports to Tom Abraham, managing director, global head of strategic solutions. Back will have responsibility for structuring and managing outsourcing transactions with key clients, as well as developing the product. Prior to joining Citigroup, Back was chief operating officer and executive director of ISIS Asset Management.

28OCT05: Brown Brothers Harriman has appointed Marc Chandler as global head of currency strategy. He will replace Anne Parker Mills, who is retiring after nearly a decade in this role. Chandler will be based in New York and will assume the responsibility for BBH’s global currency strategy products. Chandler worked most recently for HSBC as chief currency strategist.

28OCT05: Volkswagen has a very close relationship with State Street in Germany, so the bank will presumably be disappointed that KAS BANK has been awarded a GBP51m global custody mandate by the Volkswagen Group Pension Scheme in the UK. KAS will provide core custody and custody related services as well as fund accounting to the global equity portfolio managed by Alliance Bernstein. Hymans Robertson acted as consultant.

24OCT05: No official confirmation from Citigroup as yet, but Ken Back has joined the bank’s securities services business. Back was chief operating officer of ISIS Asset Management before its merger with F&C Management and the outsourcing deal with Mellon.

24OCT05: Campbell Fleming, one of the buyside’s more thoughtful operations directors, has been appointed as head of UK business at JPMorgan Asset Management. He will have responsibility for institutional, retail, investment trusts, and life and pension products, reporting to James Broderick, head of European business.

At JPMorgan since 1997, Fleming was previously European head of technology and operations. Prior to this he was head of UK retail operations. Before that, he was director of Fleming Fund Management Luxembourg.

21OCT05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Allmerica Financial to provide custody and securities lending services for USD8bn of insurance assets.

John Kavanaugh, chief investment officer of Allmerica Financial, said, “After a thorough evaluation process, we selected The Bank of New York based on its advanced systems' capabilities, high level of client service and commitment to the securities servicing industry. Its proven experience and expertise were key components in the decision to expand our relationship.”

20OCT05: More high-level changes at JPMorgan, which is undergoing a transformational period under its new management team. Ramy Bourgi, who has been running the investor services business in EMEA since 2001, is to leave the firm. His responsibilities will be split between Liz Nolan, who has been managing the EMEA infrastructure since a reorganisation in April, and Conrad Kozak. Kozak, who has been in charge of strategy for the treasury and securities services business, takes on securities operations, replacing Neil Henderson, who is also leaving the firm. In addition to operations, Kozak will also have responsibility for sales, relationship management and product management. In Europe, Richard Warne will head the new relationship management function.

20OCT05: Citigroup has agreed with Janus Capital Group to be the service provider for the asset manager’s retail separately managed accounts business. Citigroup is expected to start managed account operations for Janus in mid-November.

“We conducted a comprehensive review of service providers in response to the rapid expansion of our managed account business,” says David Weitzenfeld, senior director, global platform services, Janus Capital Group. “Citigroup’s solution proved to be a good fit for both our current requirements and go-forward strategic initiatives.”

20OCT05: Deutsche Bank has been appointed by State Street as sub-custodian for select customer assets in Italy. The appointment follows State Street’s decision earlier this year to use Deutsche Bank as an additional sub-custody provider for the French market.

20OCT05: Lee Munder Capital Group has selected JPMorgan to provide outsourcing services for its separately managed accounts products included in the USD2.5bn in assets that LMCG manages for institutional and private clients.

“Lee Munder Capital Group selected JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services because they offer the latest in technology and every service we need to establish a first-rate managed accounts program,” said Kenneth Swan, LMCG president.

19OCT05: Bjurman, Barry & Associates has selected Brown Brothers Harriman to provide custody and securities lending services to its US mutual funds.

“We feel that BBH actively shares our service commitments and provides us with proven capabilities and an extended range of services that we felt were optimal to the management of our funds,” said Andrew Bjurman, president and chief executive officer of Bjurman, Barry. “BBH was chosen through an extensive review process.”

18OCT05: After a long and distinguished career in banking, which started at Chase, Robert Binney retires from Citigroup at the end of this week. Binney, who is managing director and head of global client development for Citigroup's global transaction services business, became a convert to the custody business after being famously sceptical during his time as a corporate banker.

Binney had been head of the EMEA custody business at Chase but, following the merger with Chemical and a 1995 management reshuffle that saw Paul Maloy moving into that role, he joined Citi in 1996 to lead the development of new securities business in the region. His roles at Citi have included managing director and head of sales and account management in Europe, Middle East and Africa for the cross-border custody operation of the bank’s global securities services business.

18OCT05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has been selected by Kiewit Investment Fund for a range of fund services including fund accounting, fund administration, performance measurement, transfer agency and custody services.

“We chose JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services because they were uniquely qualified to provide a competitively priced, bundled product solution to address the unique needs of our fund.” said Bob Giles, CEO of Kiewit.

18OCT05: State Street has announced two appointments within its investor services business in Northern Europe.

Michael Walsh, currently head of WM Performance Services, has been named managing director and head of State Street’s business in Scotland. Walsh assumes the role from John Corcoran, who is returning to Boston to take up a role in State Street’s mutual fund administration group. Walsh will continue to retain his role with WM, which he has held since January 2004.

Steve Wisson has been appointed to a new role as senior vice president responsible for client integration within State Street’s investment operations outsourcing group. Wisson joins State Street having served for three years as the global head of operations for AXA Investment Managers, a role in which he worked very closely with State Street in forming their outsourcing partnership.

17OCT05: Unusual to see movement between the two arch clearing and settlement rivals, Citi and BNP Paribas, so the French bank must be very pleased to have lured Connie Raif to its ranks. Raif is to head the financial institutions coverage group in Germany, reporting to Gerald Noltsche, general manager, with a functional reporting line to Steve Chew, head of FI coverage for Europe.

17OCT05: Citigroup has been appointed securities clearing agent by CLSA in Malaysia. CLSA, a unit of Crédit Agricole, is the first foreign broker in Malaysia to appoint a third party to clear and settle securities transactions executed directly on Bursa Malaysia Securities, the Malaysian stock exchange.

“Outsourcing the clearing and settlement to Citigroup enables us to speed up time-to-market, reduce fixed costs and concentrate on our core business in research broking,” said David Ilett, group head of trading operations at CLSA.

17OCT05: ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services has joined EquiLend, the securities finance platform. EquiLend will also provide select services to Mellon’s global securities lending arm.

“Utilising EquiLend’s services will give us greater distribution for our lending clients, helping us grow our business and meet the demanding needs of the ever more competitive international securities finance market,” says Jamie Ball, managing director and head of capital markets at ABN AMRO Mellon.

13OCT05: JPMorgan has been selected by Rabobank as its global clearing services provider for US dollar cash and securities transactions. In addition to providing clearing and custody services for Rabobank’s US dollar securities portfolios, JPMorgan will process all US dollar treasury and Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) payments and a large proportion of commercial payments for the bank. JPMorgan will serve 14 Rabobank locations across Europe, Asia and North America.

William Padula, senior vice president and chief operating officer for Rabobank International in the Americas, said: “JPMorgan demonstrated a thorough understanding of our business needs and shows strong capabilities in global clearing and securities services.  We are looking forward to working with JPMorgan as we expand our US dollar business.”

13OCT05: ABN AMRO Mellon and Mellon have implemented Performance Explorer, the web-based securities lending performance measurement service. The banks will now provide independent securities lending performance measurement services and benchmarking to all their lending clients.

Performance Explorer compares individual lending results against the aggregated data of a broad, customisable universe of industry peers. It currently collects aggregated data on more than 1.3m securities lending transactions for over 72,000 securities and more than 13,000 portfolios. Recent figures compiled by the service indicated total lendable assets at almost USD7trn and total on-loan balances at more than USD1.5trn.

12OCT05: Two stories from The Bank of New York demonstrate the intrinsic difficulties in trying to please all of the people all of the time with a common operating platform.

BNY has successfully completed the implementation of its outsourcing deal with RCM (UK) Ltd, part of the Allianz Global Investors Group, on schedule and within budget. The arrangement includes the migration of RCM’s systems to the bank’s SmartSource platform, the strategic IT and operations package designed to meet the outsourcing needs of investment managers.

This follows the successful transition of RCM’s San Francisco operation to the SmartSource platform in September 2004. BNY claims that this combined move is the first successful migration of a global investment manager to a centralised strategic outsourcing platform. RCM (UK) Ltd is also the first UK firm to use the bank’s new trade enrichment and confirmation product.

Michael Hooper, chief financial and operating officer of RCM (UK) Ltd, said: “The transition to the SmartSource platform was efficiently and effectively managed and kept to a tight budget and timescale. The decision to outsource our middle office will allow us to concentrate on our core activities and continue our growth in the future.”

However, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers is to move its global asset management business on to a single in-house platform, developed originally for its US operation. At first blush, it looks as if BNY, which has been supporting MLIM on the CLASS platform, will lose out heavily, having been trying for many months to convince MLIM of the attractions of SmartSource. But MLIM is only taking back trade processing and client reporting functions: BNY will continue to provide European custody, fund accounting and related services, for assets of around $100bn. BNY and MLIM have agreed a fixed contract for these services. No date has yet been put on when CLASS will finally be switched off, which will now be the subject of negotiation.

12OCT05: Gartmore Global Investments has selected JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services to provide outsourcing services for separately managed accounts included in the $81bn of assets that Gartmore's affiliated advisers collectively manage.

JPMorgan Managed Account Solutions will provide Gartmore with managed account outsourcing services designed to automate back-office functions such as account opening and closing, account maintenance, document management, order management, performance reporting and account reconciliation.

“Gartmore selected JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services because they had the most comprehensive range of services, the most advanced technology in the industry, and a team of people who understand our business,” said Tim Grugeon, vice president of business unit support and outsourcing at Gartmore Global Investments.

JPMorgan formed a strategic alliance with Vestmark, a specialist in SMA administration, in March 2004.

12OCT05: The Bank of New York has formed a marketing alliance with National Australia Bank to offer commission recapture services to National’s custody clients in Australia and New Zealand.

Through the arrangement, local superannuation and other funds will have access to commission recapture services from Lynch, Jones & Ryan, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BNY brokerage unit. National will promote LJR’s services in Australia and New Zealand.

National Custodian Services is Australia's largest custodian and provides custody and investment administration service to over 100 clients in Australia and New Zealand, holding AUD350bn assets under custody and administration as of December 31, 2004. BNY is am major provider of global custody services to National and, last year, BNY bought out National’s UK custody business, Clydesdale.

12OCT05: Brown Brothers Harriman has appointed Paul Donnelly as managing director of Brown Brothers Harriman Trustee Services (Ireland) Limited.

Donnelly joins BBH following 15 years with Barings (Ireland) Limited, where he was managing director for more than nine years. While at Barings, Donnelly oversaw marketing and development of the company’s products and services and also assumed responsibility for compliance with the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland.

11OCT05: Northern Trust has appointed Ian Castledine as senior risk consultant to lead the enhancement of its London-based predictive risk capabilities for clients in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Although Northern Trust has been providing global predictive risk analytics services since 1997, Castledine’s appointment means that Northern Trust will be able to offer this service from London for the first time.

Predictive risk is about providing total plan, asset class and portfolio level risk analysis that helps pension funds to identify future potential risk issues in their portfolios before they cause performance surprises.

Castledine’s responsibilities will include developing the scale and scope of Northern Trust's predictive risk capabilities in London. Initially, he will focus on services for pension fund clients, with the long-term strategy of developing capabilities for the investment manager segment.

Castledine joins from Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in London, where he spent almost eight years, latterly as an equity risk quant analyst.

07OCT05: The Bank of New York has provided more information on a major reorganisation in the summer that has seen three regional investor services units established. Pat Curtin now runs investor services in the US, with Ken Lopian running IS Asia Pacific and Stephen Richardson in charge of IS Europe. In a clear indication of the bank’s growing commitment to the international markets, each of these businesses will have P&L responsibilities.

Tim Keaney, who has been in charge of Europe since replacing Jeff Tessler in 2003, adds to his duties with global responsibility for outsourcing and product management. Andy Bell, head of outsourcing, and Rick Stanley, head of product management and global accounting, both report to Keaney. Again, this appears to reflect the bank’s belief that overseas markets represent stronger growth opportunities. Fred Ricciardi, who was head of custody services, moves to take up a strategic advisory role for Gerald Hassell, the bank’s president.

In Europe, Richardson’s place as head of operations is filled by Kin Corning, who moves from his role as head of technology for Europe. Benjie Fraser heads up pension fund services, Mark Kerns leads the fund managers unit, David Aldrich continues to look after hedge funds and broker/dealers and Reggie Meredith-Carpeni takes on a new role as head of client management and administration.

Richard Beaven, who was to oversee the custody product in Europe, is leaving BNY to join Reuters.

07OCT05: It is truly the end of an era at JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services. Sue Curtis, who has been a stalwart in the pension fund sector, and who is widely regarded as one of the best operators in the business, is cashing in on her experience and contacts to move across to JPMorgan Asset Management. She will be a client adviser in the UK institutional team and will report to Peter Ball, head of UK institutional business. Curtis spent 15 years with the Chase/JPMorgan custody business, primarily in client management and business development roles.

Ramy Bourgi, business executive for JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services EMEA, said: “We are very grateful to Sue for her contribution in helping establishing JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services as a major provider to the European pensions industry. I wish Sue every success in her new role with JPMorgan Asset Management.”

07OCT05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Gottex Value Added Fund Limited to provide fund of hedge fund custody and transaction processing for USD5bn of hedge fund assets. Custody will be provided through AIB/BNY Trust Company Limited, Dublin. The bank has also been appointed to handle the banking requirements for the whole Gottex fund of hedge funds structure.

Clive Snowdon, chief operating officer, Gottex Fund Management, said: “We selected The Bank of New York as it clearly demonstrated its ability to deliver the added transparency and efficiency that our rapidly growing suite of funds requires. Our operational efficiency will be dramatically improved through the bank’s new fund of hedge funds platform and the technology interfaces that we have put in place. We also recognised banking as a core competency of The Bank of New York and worked with them to leverage off the synergies of combining this with custody and other services that the bank provides to derive a dynamic, across the board, solution for Gottex products. Throughout the process we were impressed by the bank’s dedication in applying a very high level of resources to this complex mandate.”

07OCT05: Catherine Eardley, who used to run JPMorgan’s Scottish client management and sales activities out of Edinburgh, has taken up a post as executive director, membership and marketing, at The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

05OCT05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Bolsa de Valores de Montevideo (BVM), the stock exchange and central depository of Uruguay, as global custodian for its $500m of US and global fixed income assets.

Angel Urraburu, president of BVM, said: “We selected The Bank of New York because of its commitment to Latin America and are confident that we will benefit from its processing expertise and regional support. Its services will augment our current operational infrastructure and allow us to more aggressively buy securities in the US market.” 

05OCT05: Paula Sausville Arthus, who was a victim of JPMorgan’s rethink of its approach to outsourcing, has joined the mutual fund services business unit of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation as managing director, relationship management, leading relationship management and sales efforts. In this new position, she will report to Ann Bergin, managing director, distribution services.

Arthus was removed from her role as head of JPMorgan’s asset manager solutions group in January. She spent more than 25 years in investment management operations, technology and custody.

04OCT05: Cathal O'Daly has joined Citigroup’s client management team in Dublin, reporting to Terry Alleyne. He comes from Northern Trust where he held various positions, including trustee services manager, regulatory affairs manager and relationship manager.

04OCT05: ABN AMRO Mellon has been making steady inroads into the UK corporate pension fund sector, and its capture of the consolidated GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) scheme – with a large chunk taken from The Bank of New York – further strengthens its presence.

GSK has appointed ABN AMRO Mellon as global custodian of its EUR6bn corporate pension fund. ABN AMRO Mellon will provide global custody and performance measurement services. In addition, a unitisation solution has been provided, which was one of the key factors in GSK’s decision.

ABN AMRO Mellon had an existing relationship with SmithKline Beecham and held assets in custody of about EUR740m. Following the merger of SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo, the corporate pension fund decided to consolidate its custody assets with a single global custodian.

Commenting on the appointment, Martin Mannion, pensions finance manager at GlaxoSmithKline, said: “We were impressed by ABN AMRO Mellon’s approach to our business, and their presentation demonstrated an excellent understanding of our requirements across the board. They also had the right chemistry for us – a great team spirit and culture. We look forward to a high-quality service from them.”

30SEP05: Mark Tidy has joined the EMEA securities lending sales team of JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services. Tidy will be based in London, reporting to David Mitchell, head of client management and sales, securities lending and market products, EMEA. Previously Tidy worked in securities lending at Nomura and, most recently, Deutsche Bank.

30SEP05: Two years ago Brownco was seen as part of JPMorgan’s evolving strategy for delivering execution services to fund managers through the investor services business. Now the bank has signed a definitive agreement to sell BrownCo, the online discount brokerage business, to E*TRADE FINANCIAL for a cash purchase price of USD1.6bn. JPMorgan Chase expects to record an after-tax gain of approximately USD700m. The sale is subject to normal regulatory approvals and is should close by year-end. 

BrownCo has approximately 200,000 active accounts, 28,000 daily average revenue trades, USD3bn in margin accounts, USD3.4bn in customer credits and USD29bn in client assets. The business provides online deep discount brokerage services and focuses on the active trader segment of the market.

29SEP05: Kevin Shearan has been promoted to chief information officer at Mellon Financial Corporation. He will be responsible for Mellon's technology strategy, applications development, data processing, information security, and data and voice networking. Shearan, 51, who joined Mellon in 1997, has been a member of its senior management committee since 2001. Prior to joining Mellon, Shearan was director of technology for the worldwide securities services division of Citigroup.

29SEP05: Citigroup, Clearstream and Barclays Capital have executed the first ever quad-party securities financing trade, following a collaborative effort to develop a new collateral custody service facility to enable easier financing of international and domestic assets.

Quad-party repo is an extension of Clearstream’s tripartite repo service. The fourth party involved - the local agent bank appointed by the cash taker to hold their domestic assets - becomes an extension of the triparty set up. Instead of forcing the cash taker to move the assets from their domestic agent bank into the international market for financing, quad-party enables the triparty repo to be extended into domestic markets, thereby respecting the cash takers’ choice of where they want to hold their assets.

Citigroup and Clearstream have jointly developed the service, and Barclays Capital, a key user of collateralised financing services at Clearstream, executed the first trade last week. The service involves Citi acting as Clearstream’s collateral subcustodian, and vice versa on a non-exclusive basis.

29SEP05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Stephen Turner as head of global fund services product in the UK. He is based in London and reports locally to Tony Solway, head of BNP Paribas Securities Services UK, and globally to Frederic Perard, head of global fund services product. He will take responsibility for the product management activity around outsourcing, fund administration, retail investor services and custody.

Turner joins BNP Paribas from Citigroup, where he spent twelve years in a number of roles in London, Japan and Switzerland. Most recently, he was securities strategic solutions director, responsible for engineering large outsourcing contracts. Between 2001 and 2004, he was CEO of the NikkoCiti Trust and Banking Corporation in Japan, a company offering a range of trustee and custodial services. Prior to that, he was responsible for growing Citi’s franchise in Switzerland. Before joining Citi, Turner spent eight years at Chase Manhattan in a succession of network management, settlement and treasury roles.

27SEP05: After a 12-month evaluation period, during which it often appeared as if the mandate would almost certainly move, Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) has finally renewed its investment operations outsourcing arrangement with State Street. The original outsourcing mandate was announced in October 2000.

27SEP05: Who can say why Mellon has been so coy about its plan to look for a successor to Marty McGuinn, the chairman and CEO? Although it filed a press release dated 23 September with the SEC, it has not yet added it to the corporate website. However, it has appointed headhunters Heidrick & Struggles “to provide professional assistance in connection with the succession” of McGuinn, who turns 65 in September 2007. Internal and external candidates will be considered for the post. Earlier this year McGuinn was named by Forbes magazine as one of the worst-value CEOs relative to share performance.

26SEP05: Northern Trust has been selected by the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4), one of the four buffer funds of the Swedish national pension system, as sole global custodian for approximately USD18bn (SEK138bn) of AP4’s domestic and overseas assets.

Agneta Wilhelmson Kåremar, director of administration at AP4, said: “Working with Thomas Murray, the custody advisers, we conducted an extensive review of global custodians and local banks in the market and believe we have found a long term ‘partner’ in Northern Trust. Northern Trust has depth and quality of service offering and, we believe, will be able to help us meet our objectives of enhanced operational efficiency across our entire global portfolio.”

26SEP05: Howard Edelstein, president and CEO of BT Radianz, is to head a new business unit within BT Global Services focused on serving the global financial industry. The new unit will combine BT Radianz with BT Trading Systems and BT Global Financial Solutions. Edelstein will serve as president and CEO of BT Global Financial Services.

BT Trading Systems is one of the world’s largest suppliers of financial trading room systems, serving more than 60,000 traders in over 1,400 trading rooms across 51 countries. BT Global Financial Solutions provides IT outsourcing services to nearly 50 financial institutions.

26SEP05: State Street has been appointed by Banco de Guatemala, central America's largest monetary authority, to provide global custody, accounting, and performance measurement services for USD3.3bn in assets.

“We went through a rigorous selection process to consolidate our global custody services with one single provider,” said Edwin Matul Ruano, general manager of Banco de Guatemala. “State Street's reputation, knowledge and experience, among other things, were clear differentiators for us in choosing a global provider.”

23SEP05: JPMorgan has completed an asset restructuring for the North Yorkshire Pension Fund. Following a review of investments, the GBP880m fund has moved from balanced to specialised equity and fixed income benchmarks and has made a number of fund manager changes. The fund’s assets are managed externally and JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services acts as global custodian.

22SEP05: Clearstream has launched ASLplus, a new service developed with Citigroup and UBS that enables securities lenders to increase the revenues they receive from their portfolios by introducing Clearstream as the principal and single borrower. ASLplus is an extension to Clearstream’s automated securities lending fails programme.

Lenders are set to benefit from increased portfolio yield and waived custody fees on lent positions. They will be able to earn additional income on their portfolio through the introduction of negotiated securities lending rates. Borrowers will have more freedom to pursue their trading strategies by easier access to Clearstream’s pool of fixed income liquidity.

Clearstream will act as collateral agent. Clearstream’s triparty collateral management services will automatically select and collateralise all ASLplus loans and allow multiple substitutions and daily margining. Small size positions will be consolidated to make a larger more lendable size for the market combined with lower rates for fails lending.

22SEP05: Pensioenfonds Predikanten of the Dutch Protestant Church has chosen KAS BANK as its global custodian. Pensioenfonds Predikanten will use KAS BANK for core custody services and performance measurement and currency overlay management. Pensioenfonds Predikanten will also outsource its investment administration to KAS BANK. The pension fund has 5,900 participants, with assets of EUR850m.

Peter Eenshuistra, director Pensioenfonds Predikanten, said: “When we chose KAS BANK, it was vital that the bank of our choice was capable of providing a total product with a strongly service-oriented support and it has won its spurs by offering continuity based on expertise and confidence”.

20SEP05: One of custody’s true industry legends, David Batten, has joined Amaces as a director, with responsibility for its UK pension fund business. Batten has previously worked with Amaces as one its business partners. Batten has held senior positions at The Bank of New York, RBS Trust Bank, Warburg and Citibank.

Amaces provides analytical and benchmarking services to pension funds and fund managers. CMS is Amaces’ analytical benchmarking product which allows subscribers to measure, benchmark and manage their custody and fund administration arrangements. Clients can evaluate their performance levels against universes of other investors and against their own specially tailored peer group.

20SEP05: Northern Trust continues to expand its asset servicing sales team for Europe, Middle East and Africa with the appointments of Ben Williams-Thomas, Marc Russell-Jones and Michael Slater.

Williams-Thomas has joined as a vice president, responsible for custody sales to European pension funds. He joins from JPMorgan Investor Services where he spent four years as vice president, sales and marketing, for the e-business solutions team.

Russell-Jones becomes vice president responsible for sales to investment managers, focusing on alternative asset administration business development. He joins from The Bank of New York where he worked for three years, latterly as vice president, alternative investment services sales.

Slater joins as vice president, responsible for custody and asset administration sales to Middle East and North African markets. He comes from HSBC Institutional Fund Services where he was a sales and relationship manager for the Middle East and North Africa.

20SEP05: When JPMorgan bought Plexus in 2002 it looked as if the bank was going to make a bigger splash in the front office with its information products. But things did not go according to plan, and now Plexus is to be sold to Investment Technology Group, the provider of technology-based equity trading services and transaction research. The all-cash acquisition is valued at approximately $12m. Plexus’ revenues in 2004 were approximately $11m. In 2005, revenues are projected to remain at the same levels and the business is expected to break even. The transaction is expected to close within 120 days, subject to customary closing conditions.

20SEP05: State Street, the world’s largest transition manager, has successfully completed a EUR1.4bn portfolio transition for a portion of the Volkswagen pension fund in Germany. State Street has been providing custody and accounting services for Volkswagen since 1997. The transition involved a move to a masterfund and a simultaneous multi-asset class restructuring of the portfolio with the appointment of a number of specialist managers, including an overlay mandate.

“State Street worked together with us to understand the complex facets involved in our portfolio restructuring,” said Albrecht Möhle, board member of Volkswagen Pension Trust e.V. “We were pleased with the seamless transition of our fund.”

20SEP05: Société Générale Global Securities Services for Investors (GSSI) has been appointed as sole custodian for the new complementary retirement fund, Nouveau Régime de Retraite Complémentaire Obligatoire (NRCO), created by ORGANIC in 2004. ORGANIC is the compulsory social security scheme in France that manages death and invalidity insurance for shopkeepers, independent industrialists and related professions. NRCO assets are expected to reach around EUR500m by the end of this year.

20SEP05: Euroclear Bank clients are set to benefit from a EUR7m reduction in fees for choosing Euroclear Bank to manage their collateral. From 1 November 2005, clients will save 25 pct, on average, in settlement and service fees as a direct result of the economies of scale that are offered from the higher volumes of business that clients place with Euroclear Bank’s triparty collateral management service.

Also effective 1 November, Euroclear Bank will offer its Triweb online reporting service free of charge to all clients.

20SEP05: Marc Stern, currently president of TCW, the US asset manager majority-owned by SG Asset Management, has been appointed chairman of Société Générale’s global investment management and services unit in North America, which includes the custody, brokerage and transfer agency businesses.

16SEP05: Clearstream has hired Philippe Seyll as its new head of investment fund services. Seyll, a Belgian citizen, has been at The Bank of New York since 1997, most recently as head of the investment managers team in London.

15SEP05: The Bank of New York has opened a representative office in Kuala Lumpur. Alvin Kwan has been appointed as chief representative. Kwan has been a vice president and Malaysian specialist in Singapore since joining the Bank in 2004.

15SEP05: HSBC Securities Services has appointed Joe Diment as head of product management for strategic outsourcing services. This is a new position reporting to Richard Godfrey, head of strategic outsourcing services.

Diment joins from Deutsche Asset Management, where he established the client services group. Previously he had been senior manager of the global equity and UK fund administration businesses.

14SEP05: KAS BANK has signed up two new UK pension fund clients - Nuffield Hospitals Pension and Life Assurance Scheme and Heron Pension Scheme. These new wins bring the number of UK institutional clients to over 20, of which 18 are pension funds. Worldwide, KAS BANK now has assets under custody of some EUR290bn.

The Nuffield Hospitals scheme has appointed KAS BANK to provide core custody and fund accounting to its global equity portfolio, which is managed by Wellington Management International Ltd.

KAS BANK is providing core custody and fund accounting to The Heron scheme’s UK fixed income fund, as well consolidated reporting to include Heron’s pooled equity fund.

14SEP05: HSBC Securities Services Europe has appointed Linda McLennan as head of relationship management for strategic outsourcing services. This is a new position reporting directly to Richard Godfrey, head of strategic outsourcing services.

Prior to joining HSBC McLennan worked at The Bank of New York where she was senior sales manager for hedge fund administration in Europe. Before that she spent 10 years at Bank of Bermuda, now HSBC's alternative fund services group.

13SEP05: F&C Asset Management has admitted what most of us have suspected for some time – that the outsourcing project with Mellon has fallen behind schedule. In its interim statement released yesterday, F&C said: “The outsourcing of investment administration has proven to be complex and will take longer to implement than originally envisaged. Mellon has been chosen as our partner in this area, but it will take until late 2006 to fully integrate data and systems onto a single platform. The full financial benefits will not be realised until early 2008 following migration on to Mellon’s strategic platform. We now envisage just over GBP20m of synergy benefits (from the ISIS merger) in the current year, further benefits in 2006 and the full GBP33m by early 2008. The GBP50m forecast cost of achieving the synergies is likely to be exceeded because of the complexity of the outsourcing requirements and should be in the region of GBP60m. However we do not foresee this impacting our cash or reserves forecasts in the short term as the outsourcing costs will spread into 2007 and possibly 2008.”

12SEP05: Northern Trust has been awarded the mandate to provide custody services for approximately GBP65m in UK equity assets managed by Majedie Asset Management for the Sony United Kingdom Pension Fund.

12SEP05: Mellon Financial Corporation and Russell Investment Group have announced that Mellon has acquired Russell’s 50 percent share of the firms’ joint venture, Russell/Mellon, and that its performance-related products and services will now be named Mellon Analytical Solutions (MAS). In addition, Russell will bring the management of all aspects of its index business in-house.

Established in January 1999, Russell/Mellon has more than 650 employees in five countries and more than USD6trn in assets under measurement. MAS will continue to provide performance measurement, analytics, attribution, universes and risk analysis solutions to institutional investors and money managers in 25 countries.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mellon will assume responsibility for existing Russell/Mellon locations and workforce. About 30 members of the Russell/Mellon index-related team will become Russell employees. MAS will be part of Mellon’s asset servicing sector, which accounted for 22 per cent of Mellon’s revenue and 15 per cent of Mellon’s profit in the first six months of 2005. Asset servicing delivers solutions to institutional investors globally through its custody business, global securities services, in addition to outsourcing, content and technology solutions through investment manager solutions.

12SEP05: JPMorgan has hired Jude Colangelo to manage strategic business development for the company’s US equity clearance business, a group within worldwide securities services (WSS). Colangelo reports to Liz Nolan, global clearance executive and co-regional head of WSS EMEA.

Colangelo was recently director of US clearing at Merrill Lynch, where he managed all US equity, fixed income and listed equity options operations. Colangelo had held the position since 2004 and was employed with Merrill Lynch for 10 years, including building Merrill’s clearing business in Australia, managing its US broker dealer international operations, and managing strategic product development in the UK.

12SEP05: HSBC has hired Paul Beedle as head of client services for institutional fund services in Europe. Beedle joins from ABN AMRO Mellon in London, where he was head of client services.

12SEP05: RBC Global Services has appointed Neale Martin as head of the risk management and compliance group for RBC Global Services Australia. Martin will be responsible for managing all compliance and risk management policy matters, including business continuity planning and internal control management. Martin was compliance manager at Tower Australia Limited.

07SEP05: State Street has been reappointed by Liontrust Asset Management PLC to provide an expanded range of financial services. The agreement extends State Street’s longstanding relationship with Liontrust, which currently has assets under management of more than GBP4bn.

Under the terms of the agreement, State Street will continue to provide Liontrust with fund accounting, custody and trustee services. WM Performance Services will also provide Liontrust with a client reporting package, including monthly and quarterly reports and performance analysis, as well as WM’s Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) verification reporting service.

“State Street has been a valued partner for more than 10 years,” said Vinay Abrol, chief operating officer for Liontrust. “They have consistently delivered a high standard of investment services expertise to us, and we are delighted to announce the extension of our partnership, and indeed the expansion of it to encompass WM’s offering.”

07SEP05: Northern Trust has established an investment manager liaison group office in New York City to support the firm's growing number of investment manager relationships in the Northeast US. The New York group will assist investment managers in the region with trade settlement, performance analysis, daily valuation and other services.

07SEP05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has launched its new VIEWS portfolio reporting technology, a system for institutional investors to report custody, accounting and securities lending activities.

VIEWS is available via the JPMorgan ACCESS portal. The custody, accounting and securities lending reporting applications are the latest in a series of VIEWS technology innovations including JPMorgan E-Tax, JPMorgan Performance Measurement and related services such as JPMorgan's electronic distribution of corporate action materials.

07SEP05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has been appointed by the Norwegian Banks' Guarantee Fund to provide custody, fund accounting, compliance, performance measurement and securities lending services for USD2.25bn of assets. 

The NBGF was created in July 2004 as a result of the merger of the Commercial Banks' Guarantee Fund and the Savings Banks' Guarantee Fund. Banks with a head office in Norway, and subsidiaries of foreign banks operating in the country, are members of the NBGF in accordance with Norwegian law. The main role of the NBGF is to cover deposits in member banks. Norwegian law states that deposits are guaranteed up to a total amount of NOK2m.

In March 2005, the board of the NBGF announced a new investment strategy to replace the strategies of the two former guarantee funds, and subsequently undertook an extensive review of securities services providers.

Sigmund Frøyen, chief investment officer, at the Norwegian Banks' Guarantee Fund, said, “We are impressed by JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services' experience in the region and its ability to provide such a broad and deep range of services. In particular, we feel that JPMWSS offers the most comprehensive and flexible performance management and analytic tool available to help us maximise the returns on our assets.”

07SEP05: Clearstream has launched a new service element that offers clients better use of structured securities pledged as collateral, allowing them to optimise their collateral allocation. The new functionality allows customers to set specific collateral selection criteria for structured securities such as asset-backed securities and mortgage-backed securities. In addition, Clearstream has introduced an additional haircut figure in line with the counterparty expectation to ensure a fair value calculation for the underlying collateral.

07SEP05: Deutsche Bank has added Austria to its sub-custody network. Uwe Dreger, currently head of product and client management for Deutsche’s domestic custody service in Germany, will take on Austria as well. Deutsche now covers 27 markets across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

06SEP05: ABN AMRO Mellon has launched services in Luxembourg and has appointed Ravi Thakur as general manager. Thakur joins from Brown Brothers Harriman, where he gained over 12 years’ experience, including two years as head of sales and two years as head of relationship management for BBH Luxembourg.

06SEP05: The Bank of New York has created a data warehouse for funds of hedge funds. The warehouse, which is based within the bank’s technology platform for hedge funds, known as Praeeo, covers a full range of reporting and transactions required by funds of hedge funds.

The platform provides consolidated reporting and distribution capabilities, trade work flow management, position maintenance at a tax-lot level, data enrichment and document management.  It also maintains contact information for parties of interest and can act as a storage resource for business records that enables clients to store data about fund structures, financial statements and dealing forms.

BNY has hedge fund assets under administration of more than USD65bn.

05SEP05: ABN AMRO Mellon has appointed Søren Eberhard to the post of business development manager for the Nordic market. He is based in Copenhagen and is responsible for developing ABN AMRO Mellon’s business strategy for growth in the Nordic region. He will also support the region’s sales and relationship management activities. 

Prior to ABN AMRO Mellon, Eberhard was head of securities services with global responsibilities for Danske Bank for six years, and has over 20 years’ experience in securities services in the Nordic market.

02SEP05: Northern Trust has been retained to provide trust accounting and custodial services by Commerce Bank & Trust, an independent banking company headquartered in Topeka, Kansas. The bank's investment management group has more than a thousand clients with approximately USD825m in trust and custody assets.

02SEP05: CALYON Paris and IXIS Corporate & Investment Banking have become new collateral providers for The Bank of New York’s collateral management product. These partnerships mark a new entry for BNY into the French securities lending and financing market.

02SEP05: Fortis has consolidated its onshore and offshore fund servicing activities under one single brand name: Fortis Prime Fund Solutions. This unit now services both traditional and alternative asset managers with fund administration, global custody, securities lending, clearing services and financing. Fortis Prime Fund Solutions ranks among the top three of global offshore service providers and among the top five of Luxembourg onshore providers. In the new setup Fortis Prime Fund Solutions administers over USD180bn in assets with 1,400 funds.

01SEP05: Under the leadership of Arnulf Manhold, JPMorgan has become the largest non-domestic custodian in Germany. Now, after six years with the bank, and nearly three decades in the financial services industry, Manhold is standing down as head of worldwide securities services for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Oliver Berger, currently head of continental European sales for WSS, will become replace him, and will relocate from London to Frankfurt.

01SEP05: International Financial Data Services, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street and DST, has signed up Investec for its eDistributor service. eDistributor is a centralised service for nominee and institutional dealing, enquiry and the provision of online reporting and downloads. Investec will retain its dealing and enquiry functions in-house but will take the online reporting and download solution which provides intermediaries and institutions with real-time reporting of daily deal confirmations, reconciliation reports, valuations and distribution reports.

01SEP05: Northern Trust is moving two executives to senior positions in its corporate & institutional services business unit.

Connie Lindsey, currently director of enterprise relationship management within worldwide operations & technology, will lead the public entities and institutions market segment, responsible for the institutional client servicing of Northern Trust's public fund, Taft-Hartley, not-for-profit, and correspondent trust clients.

Kevin Rochford, currently managing director of sales and client servicing in the United States and Asia for Northern Trust Global Investments, becomes group head of the large corporate market segment, responsible for client servicing and business development among Northern Trust's largest corporate clients in North America.

Both Lindsey and Rochford will report to Rick Waddell, president of corporate & institutional services.

01SEP05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has been appointed by WestLB and the investment bank of JPMorgan as tri-party collateral manager for the first dedicated asset-backed securities tri-party deal in Europe.

Andy Wise, director of credit repo at WestLB, said: “We are impressed by the pricing capabilities and the commitment to collateral management of JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services and we are pleased to be working with them on the first deal of its kind in the European market.”

25AUG05: Northern Trust is consolidating its relationship with Julius Baer. Julius Baer Investments Limited (JBIL), Julius Baer's UK institutional investment management business, has selected Northern as its preferred provider of investment outsourcing solutions for USD4.5bn (GBP2.5bn) in fixed income assets under management.

The full range of services to be outsourced by JBIL under the proposed agreement are trade matching, confirmation and settlement, investment recordkeeping, entitlement processing, pricing, asset set-up, reconciliation, client reporting, valuations and performance analysis.

The agreement is expected to be completed by the end of 2005 when four JBIL employees will transfer to Northern Trust.

The new agreement is an extension of Northern Trust's existing relationship with Julius Baer's institutional investment management office in New York, for which Northern Trust has been providing middle and back office outsourcing solutions since 2004.

Michael Allen, senior manager, operations at JBIL, said: “Through its partnership with our New York office, Northern Trust has demonstrated over the last year that it can deliver superior services from an operational and technological stand point, and that its approach to human resources and client service is in line with our own practices. It is important to us to be able to work with our selected provider in partnership to maximise synergies and maintain the highest standards for our staff and our clients, and Northern Trust is already showing us that it can meet our needs in all of these areas. We look forward to extending our relationship with Northern Trust into the UK market place.”

25AUG05: BISYS, the troubled outsourcing provider which is under investigation by the SEC, today announced that BISYS Alternative Investment Services will open a new servicing facility in Waterford, Ireland. The Waterford office will complement BISYS' existing operations in Dublin and provide services to BISYS' hedge fund and private equity clients.

BISYS Alternative Investment Services has over USD200bn in assets under administration, with approximately 450 clients and over 1,600 funds, including hedge funds, private equity funds, fund-of-funds, and other alternative investment products. 

25AUG05: State Street is moving ahead in the highly competitive UK public funds sector, announcing four additional mandates:

It has extended its relationship with the Rhondda Cynon Taf Borough Council Superannuation Fund, which has appointed State Street as its sole global custodian. The fund has more than GBP850m in total assets, of which GBP500m was previously serviced by State Street. 

The London Borough of Lambeth Superannuation Fund has awarded State Street a new mandate to provide custody, fund accounting and commission recapture services for GBP115m of its assets.

The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham Superannuation Fund has appointed State Street as the sole global custodian of its GBP415m in assets following an investment manager review. Under the terms of the new mandate, State Street will also provide investment accounting and transition management in addition to full custody services.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest Pension Fund has extended its relationship with State Street, appointing it as the sole custodian of its GBP355m in assets. State Street will now provide investment accounting to the entire Fund, and will extend its provision of custody services to GBP240m of new assets.

WM Performance Services, the European performance measurement division of State Street, will continue to provide performance measurement services to each of the four funds. The funds will be serviced from State Street’s service centres in London and Edinburgh.

25AUG05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Malcolm Pobjoy as head of institutional investor sales in the UK. Based in London, he reports directly to Margaret Harwood-Jones, head of global sales and relationship management for institutional investors. He replaces Peter Christmas, who quit earlier this year to join Pershing.

Pobjoy joins from Omgeo, where he was director of strategic business development. Prior to Omgeo, he spent seven years at Citigroup, where he worked in various roles in securities services. Before Citigroup, he spent eight years in the technology industry, responsible for sales of portfolio accounting systems at Extel and computer systems at Wang.

24AUG05: The Nordic region is getting all the custodians hot under the collar, but none has yet gone as far as The Bank of New York, which has just announced a deal that could well propel it straight into the top flight in the region. BNY has signed a strategic agreement with Nordea, one of the leading financial services providers in the region, to provide global custody and other related services to Nordea’s institutional clients in the Nordic and Baltic Sea markets. Related services will include FX, securities lending, transition management and commission recapture, with Netik, in which BNY has a stake, providing the technology infrastructure. The banks will be jointly marketing their services.

The scope of the agreement involves approximately EUR240bn of assets, representing about half of Nordea’s EUR500bn assets under custody. Nordea will remain the clients’ primary contact, including the contractual relationship. BNY will provide the technology and servicing infrastructure.

According to figures provided by BNY, the Nordic region – Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark – has EUR1.14trn of investable assets: EUR538bn of pension fund assets, EUR208bn in mutual funds and EUR368bn in insurance.

23AUG05: Continuing its recent success with US public funds, Mellon has been named master custodian for USD7bn administered by the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System (LASERS). Mellon will provide global custody and securities lending services, and its Russell/Mellon affiliate will supply performance measurement and analytics.

“In selecting Mellon for our custody needs, we were impressed by its technology and customised reporting capabilities,” said Bobby Beale, chief investment officer of LASERS. “We also are confident that we will benefit significantly from Mellon's abilities in performance measurement and analytics.” In 2003 Mellon won the USD11bn Teachers' Retirement System of Louisiana custody mandate.

23AUG05: More hiring activity in Australia for RBC, which is rebuilding its team down under. Gordon Little joins as director of IT Services for RBC Global Services Australia, effectively immediately. Little has more than a decade of experience in the IT and financial services industries. Most recently, he was an independent IT consultant. Prior to his consulting role, he spent five years with Deutsche Asset Management, both as chief operating officer for DB Capital Partners and head of information technology for the Asia Pacific region.

17AUG05: State Street dominates the public fund sector in the US, with about 45 pct market share. But Mellon has now made a dent in that dominance, picking up the mandate as master custodian for USD113bn in public funds administered by the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA). Mellon will provide global custody and securities lending services, and its Russell/Mellon affiliate will supply performance measurement and analytics.

SBA is the fourth largest public retirement system in the country, overseeing several state funds, the largest being the Florida Retirement System Trust Fund, which serves more than 850,000 members ranging from state government workers and public school teachers to local public safety officers, firefighters and their beneficiaries.

The mandate extends Mellon’s relationship with SBA, which selected Eagle Investment Systems, a Mellon subsidiary, for its investment management software solutions two years ago.

17AUG05: The Reuters Pension Fund, the major UK pension scheme of the world’s largest multimedia news agency, has appointed The Bank of New York to provide custody services. The appointment is the result of a competitive review process conducted by Watson Wyatt, the pension scheme’s actuary. Assets are thought to be in the region of GBP650m. Custody was previously handled by the scheme’s asset managers.

16AUG05: Swiss Capital Group has appointed Northern Trust to provide custody and fund administration services to its entire fund-of-hedge-funds range comprising 15 funds with a value of approximately USD1.2bn (EUR1bn).

Marcel Schindler, chief operating officer and partner at Swiss Capital Group, said, “After conducting a comprehensive review of the administrators and custodians that supply services to the fund of hedge funds market, we chose Northern Trust because of its strategic view on the hedge fund business, its experienced team and its superior technology.”

16AUG05: BISYS, which is the subject of SEC investigations into its fund services business and its accounting practices, has appointed a new CFO. Bruce Dalziel has joined BISYS as executive vice president and chief financial officer, replacing Jim Fox, who has resigned but will stay on during the transition period. Dalziel was chief financial officer of DoubleClick, Inc.

15AUG05: Northern Trust has been appointed as global custodian by Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) for CAD22bn in plan assets. Northern Trust will also provide HOOPP with securities lending and foreign exchange services. The assets were transitioned at the beginning of July.

“After a complete and competitive review of the market's leading service providers, Northern Trust stood out among the competition,” said Clint Matthews, HOOPP's vice president, investment finance. “We believe their technology, product capabilities, client service and global experience will best suit the needs of our plan, both now and in the future.”

Established in 1960 as one of the first multi-employer plans in the country, HOOPP today serves 146,000 active members, who work at 330 health care and related organisations in Ontario, as well as over 67,000 pensioners.

15AUG05: State Street has appointed John Menard as vice president in the institutional investor sales team, responsible for public funds and Taft-Hartley plan sponsors in the United States.

Menard, who will be based in Boston, will report to Wendy LaBonte, director of sales for State Street’s institutional investor services. Prior to joining State Street, Menard was vice president and public funds sales representative for Northern Trust in Chicago.

15AUG05: Northern Trust has appointed Michael Blake as vice president, business development, within the global fund services unit. Based in Chicago, Blake will report to Ann Zeiler, senior vice president of business development for global fund services.

Blake will be responsible for new business development for the group serving investment managers, fund sponsors and other entities that manage money in-house. Before joining Northern Trust, he was director of financial markets for Business Logic Corporation in Chicago, responsible for sales and marketing of enterprise software for financial planning and managed accounts to institutional clients.

15AUG05: JPMorgan has launched JPMorgan CommanD, a full-service derivatives collateral management service. JPMorgan CommanD has been designed to help financial institutions manage the complexities of using collateral against OTC derivatives trades.

15AUG05: A study undertaken jointly by Northern Trust and Scorpio Partnership has revealed a significant change in the attitude of Swiss family offices in favour of outsourcing their back office custody and fund administration operations to providers of specialist asset servicing solutions.

The research showed that the most pressing strategic imperative of the family offices interviewed is the provision of detailed, consolidated reporting to family members.

The research also showed that, overall, respondents felt that outsourcing the family office’s back-office operations would lead to more effective risk management whilst freeing up resource – both human and financial – within the family office to focus on core activities, such as the provision of investment management and investment advisory services to family members. Respondents indicated that the outsourcing of asset administration processes is seen as an efficient solution to the problem of the high costs associated with the ongoing development and maintenance of leading-edge technologies. These are needed to support complex investment strategies and to meet increasingly demanding requirements from family members for more frequent and transparent reporting.

15AUG05: Northern Trust has appointed Griff Ehrenstrom as head of North American sales for institutional asset servicing. Ehrenstrom will be responsible for sales of institutional asset services to institutional funds, large corporate ERISA plans, public funds, Taft-Hartley funds, insurance companies, and the foundation and endowment market segments. He will be based in Chicago and will report to Jean Sheridan, executive vice president and deputy business unit head for corporate and institutional services.

30JUL05: SS&C Technologies, Inc., the specialist software and outsourcing services provider, has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Sunshine Acquisition Corporation, a corporation affiliated with The Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. The aggregate consideration to be paid to SS&C stockholders and option holders is approximately $941m. The transaction is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2005 and is subject to the usual conditions.

30JUL05: A long-standing rumour has circulated around The Citco Group Limited, the specialist fund servicing provider that is the world’s largest hedge fund administrator, about the possibility of UBS making a bid for it. But Citco has other plans: it has announced that an investor group including the Smeets Family Trust, Citco managers, and friends of the firm has acquired a controlling interest in Citco from the Sandoz Family Foundation. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The Sandoz Family Foundation, which made a substantial equity investment in Citco in 1995, will retain a minority ownership position and a seat on the Citco board.

Founded over 60 years ago, Citco Group companies today represent the largest global service provider to hedge funds, administering over $250bn in assets from 36 offices around the world. Citco Group companies also serve as custodians for over $140bn in assets of hedge funds of funds and financial institutions. The Citco Group companies also provide corporate and private client fiduciary services to multinational companies, financial institutions and their advisors.

Christopher Smeets, CEO, and Citco’s current management team will continue to run the business.

30JUL05: Northern Trust has been appointed as custodian by The Weingart Foundation for $700m of assets. Northern Trust will also provide the foundation with securities lending services.

29JUL05: Dividend arbitrage makes a lot of money for investment banks and custodians, so there will be a shiver running through the industry at the news that Italian police are investigating JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and unnamed French banks in a tax dispute worth EUR4.2bn ($5.1bn).

News wires reported that the Guardia di Finanza described the process as “a mechanism of fraud against the Italian state”, and said that several parties in the sector had been referred to judicial authorities over possible aggravated fraud, while six merchant banks based in the US and UK were referred for their administrative responsibility.

29JUL05: The Bank of New York has been appointed global custodian for the pooled assets of the GBP230m ICI Specialty Chemicals Pension Fund.

29JUL05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Steve Percival as a relationship manager covering UK financial intermediaries. Based in London, he reports directly to Jason Nabi, business development for UK financial intermediaries. He will focus on the strategic growth of the bank’s mid-tier client relations in the UK.

Percival joins from HSBC Securities Services, where he worked for eight years, most recently in the European sales and relationship division, where he was undertaking marketing and relationship management duties for institutional clients in the UK and Europe. Prior to HSS, he spent ten years at Merrill Lynch, where he was responsible for the development of private banking services to Merrill Lynch private banking clients and financial consultants in Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

26JUL05: Almost a year after Richard Godfrey, then managing director of Mellon European Fund Services, quit to join HSBC, Mellon has appointed George McKay as executive director, investment manager solutions (IMS) international. Reporting to Jack Klinck, vice chairman and president of IMS, McKay will have oversight for Mellon’s IMS businesses internationally, with specific management responsibility for the transfer agency, fund accounting and fund manager outsourcing businesses outside North America.

McKay will chair a new IMS Europe executive committee, comprised of:

Ray Pepper - transfer agency

Mike Anderson - global investment administration/fund manager outsourcing

Mick Brant - Russell/Mellon International

Jennifer Wilson - Eagle Investment Systems

David Copley - fund accounting

Cathy Santorelli - HR

Clare Coxhead - finance

Andy Beadle - risk and compliance

Harley Murphy - Country manager, Ireland/head of offshore

Mellon says that the appointment reflects its need to bring a more cohesive, integrated outsourcing and fund administration offering to the market for fund managers and large financial institutions.

McKay was previously head of all client-facing activities for Mellon European Fund Services, as well as having overall P&L responsibilities. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the fund management industry. He was managing director of JP Morgan Fleming’s pan-Asian mutual fund business from 1994 to 2002, having joined the Flemings group in 1975.

22JUL05: Further human capital acquisition by Northern Trust, this time in Asia.

Bibianna Man has been appointed sales director for North Asia, based in Hong Kong. Man joins having held different business development, relationship management and operational management roles with State Street in Boston, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, and most recently as head of business development for Standard Chartered Bank's Greater China securities services business.

Alex Tobing has been appointed sales director for South Asia, based in Singapore. Tobing has worked with ABN Amro Bank in Singapore and Citibank in Jakarta and Singapore in sales, product development and client management roles.

20JUL05: The HR department at Northern Trust has been busy again. The bank has appointed three client service managers to focus on Northern’s Dutch custody client base. Frans Hofkens joins as vice president, senior relationship manager, and Christophe De Brabanter and Dennis Presburg join as account managers. They become part of the asset servicing group’s existing Dutch client service team.

All three will be based in London initially, reporting to Paul Cutts, head of the asset servicing group’s relationship management team for Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2006, Dutch RMs will re-locate to the Netherlands in line with Northern Trust’s plans to open an office in Amsterdam. This office will represent the firm’s asset servicing and asset management businesses.

Hofkens comes from Citibank, which he joined as part of the acquisition of ABN AMRO’s sub-custody business. Before that, he was at ABN AMRO in Amsterdam for nine years, most recently as a sales consultant responsible for securities clearing and custody. Presburg joins from KAS BANK in Amsterdam where he was a senior account manager for the institutional group. De Brabanter, who joined Northern Trust at the end of 2004, previously worked in State Street’s client services department in London.

19JUL05: Yet more hiring for RBC Global Services, which has appointed John Lockbaum as head of fund services for Canada, a newly created role.

Lockbaum was most recently senior vice president and managing director at ING Wealth Management in Toronto, responsible for the retail Canadian mutual fund and mutual fund dealership businesses. His industry experience also includes 15 years with TD Canada Trust.

18JUL05: Yvonne Hurst has joined RBC Global Services as senior manager, fund accounting and reporting. Hurst has more than 18 years of experience in fund management and outsourcing services. She joins from The Bank of New York, where she was head of Europe fund services outsourcing. Prior to that, Hurst was head of operations within JPMorgan's asset manager solutions group, where she managed a team of 250 employees.

Steve Evans has joined RBC Global Services as programme manager, UK fund services. Most recently, he led the successful implementation of the wrap product offering from Lifetime Group, part of Norwich Union. Prior to that, he was product development director and head of projects at JPMorgan FundsHub. His industry experience also includes leading project roles at Mellon Fund Administration, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, SG Warburg and Century Life.

15JUL05: RBC Global Services has appointed Margaret Potter as director, relationship management in the UK. Potter has over 26 years of experience in the industry, covering services ranging from treasury to private wealth management as well as corporate trust and custody. Prior to this appointment, she was with ABN AMRO Mellon.

14JUL05: Northern Trust has expanded its investment risk and analytical services (IRAS) team in London with the appointment of Jim Trotter as head of investment risk and analytical services. He replaces Jan Nicolaou, who becomes head of strategic development within the IRAS team in a newly created role. Both Trotter and Nicolaou report to Nigel Bloomer, head of the asset servicing group’s client service team in London, and Paul D’Ouville, global head of IRAS in Chicago.

Trotter is responsible for the strategic development of Northern Trust’s performance measurement and risk solutions for UK and continental European pension funds, private corporations and public authorities. He joined from Investit, where he was a principal consultant in the performance and risk division. Prior to this, he spent five years at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and 11 years at the WM Company.

Nicolaou now focuses solely on developing Northern Trust’s performance and risk outsourcing solutions for asset mangers in the UK and continental Europe. 

14JUL05: The trustees of the BHP UK Pension Plan have appointed KAS BANK to provide core custody and fund accounting services for a GBP30m global equity portfolio. The move follows a recent appointment by the trustees of Alliance Bernstein Institutional Investment Management.

13JUL05: At first blush the announcement that Marks and Spencer Money has expanded its relationship with HSBC Securities Services looks pretty impressive, especially as HSBC stressed that the deal came “following a competitive pitch”. But then you remember that M&S Financial Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of HSBC.

HSBC will provide M&S Money, which has over GBP1.2bn of assets, with a range of investment accounting services for its unit trust, unit-linked and life fund range of products, extending the existing custody relationship. 

Paul Shingler, M&S Money’s head of savings and investment said: “HSBC’s strong product, accounting platform, flexible reporting and very high service levels were some of the key factors in the decision. We are looking forward to a long and rewarding relationship.”

13JUL05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has launched its new performance measurement and analytics reporting system. The bank hopes that this will make it more competitive with established services such as State Street’s WM, BNY’s Wilshire alliance, Russell/Mellon and RBC’s Benchmark.

13JUL05: Richard Hayden, Friedrich Merz, Gerhard Roggemann and Kurt Viermetz have been appointed to the supervisory board of Deutsche Börse AG. The positions had become vacant following the resignations of Peter Levene, Klaus Hopt, Uwe Flach and Manfred Zass. Viermetz will be a candidate for the position of chairman, as successor to Rolf Breuer.

12JUL05: Start-up UK fund manager Origin Asset Management has awarded HSBC Securities Services the mandate to provide investment administration and custody services in a deal worth up to GBP500,000 a year. HSBC won the contract after a four-way competitive pitch.

Launched in April 2005, Origin was founded by five former Investec fund managers with backing from Michael Spencer, founder of interdealer broker ICAP. Origin will manage UK and global equities for institutional clients.

12JUL05: Stephens Investment Management Group, a division of Stephens Inc., has appointed Mellon to administer its back office. This outsourcing arrangement will include trade processing, securities clearing and settlement, valuation, client billing, client statements, cash management support services and performance and analytics measurement through Russell/Mellon Analytical Services.

“Mellon is highly regarded throughout the asset management world as a leader in outsourcing services,” said Zoe Hines, executive vice president of Stephens Inc. “By using Mellon’s scaleable technology platform for our back-office needs, we expect to grow our business in a cost-efficient manner.”

12JUL05: Citigroup has made a major move into Canada with news that it has reached a 10-year agreement to provide transfer agency, fund administration and related services to AGF Management Limited and other fund managers in the Canadian market. AGF has approximately $32 billion in assets under management.

In addition to the partnership with AGF, Citigroup will gain relationships with other fund managers in Canada through the transfer of shares in Unisen, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AGF, to Citigroup. Approximately 950 Unisen employees will transfer to Citigroup and remain based in Mississauga, Ontario. The deal will close before the end of the year.

“We looked at numerous partners, and determined that Citigroup was the right choice for AGF,” said Blake Goldring, president and chief executive officer, AGF. “By partnering with such a large global provider like Citigroup, we can drive further economies of scale and give our clients access to the best in professional client services and administrative processing.”

12JUL05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has hired Gavin Callan and Michael Fox for its securities lending relationship management team in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Callan joins as vice president and EMEA securities lending client manager, based in London. Callan previously worked within Citigroup’s securities lending team as a client manager.

Fox also joins as vice president and EMEA securities lending client manager, based in London. Fox was previously with Brown Brothers Harriman, where he had a combined sales and relationship management role. Prior to that, he spent twelve years with JPMorgan in both the securities services and asset management divisions.

12JUL05: The Bank of New York has been selected by Korea Securities Depository to provide securities lending services for the National Pension Corporation.

NPC, a non-profit special corporation established in 1988 to address social welfare and security reforms administered by The Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, is the world’s eighth largest pension in terms of assets under management.

Koog-jun Cho, executive director and CIO at NPC, said: “We were seeking to optimize portfolio performance and generate incremental revenue through our securities lending programme. After a competitive review process, we appointed The Bank of New York because of its commitment to client service. We are pleased with the appointment and are confident that The Bank of New York will exceed our expectations.”

11JUL05: The long-awaited successor to Francis Remacle, head of SWIFT’s securities industry division, is to be James Donovan. Donovan, who used to work for Citigroup’s securities services business, will join SWIFT on August 1^st, and will be a member of the executive committee. Unusually, he will be based in SWIFT’s New York office, rather than La Hulpe or London.

The securities industry now accounts for more than one-third of SWIFT’s annual message traffic and continues to be its fastest growing sector.

In his most recent Citigroup assignment, Donovan was based in London and was regional business executive for EMEA and Japan for the global securities services division. Prior to joining Citi, Donovan worked for Chemical Bank and Bankers Trust Company.

06JUL05: The Bank of New York has pulled a rabbit out the hat in its effort to establish some much-needed momentum in Germany. Having watched its joint venture partner, ING, sell off its German operation, BHF-BANK, to Sal. Oppenheim last year, BNY has been struggling to develop a plan B – and now it has.

BNY and BHF-BANK have established BHF BNY Securities Services GmbH as a jointly held subsidiary. Based in Frankfurt, the new company will market depotbank services for German investment companies, and securities custody and settlement services for the national and international direct investments of institutional investors. BHF-BANK and The Bank of New York will each hold a 50 % stake in the new company.

06JUL05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has been appointed by The Money Portal plc (TMP) as platform provider for a new funds distribution offer aimed at the retail investor. The product, now in development, will enable TMP to both distribute and administer client assets using its own platform.

Richard Craven, managing director of TMP, said: “BNP Paribas is a blue-chip organisation and this gives investment management groups, many of which already use BNP Paribas for the administration of more complicated products, a high degree of comfort.”

Established in 2003, The Money Portal is one of Britain’s largest distributors of financial services to consumers in the UK, placed in the top ten largest Independent Financial Advisers. TMP has funds under management approaching GBP1.5bn.

06JUL05: Euroclear France is to develop an automated processing solution for the investment fund sector in France, Europe’s largest domestic fund market.

Due for launch during the first quarter of 2006, the new service will combine the order-routing functionality of FundSettle – Euroclear’s cross-border fund-processing platform – with the custody and settlement services of RGV/Relit+, Euroclear France’s securities processing system. This will enable the French CSD to offer a fully integrated fund processing solution, allowing investment fund transactions to be processed on a straight-through basis for the first time in France.

Euroclear says that this initiative represents part of a broader strategy that will ultimately be rolled out across the other central securities depositories in the Euroclear group.

04JUL05: Whatever hopes Citigroup may have had for retaining the Dutch custody business of ABN AMRO Mellon have been dashed by the launch of the latter’s proprietary domestic custody operation in The Netherlands. ABN AMRO Mellon says that setting up the new service was determined by its desire to offer the best local custody services for its global custody clients. Prior to the launch, ABN AMRO Mellon used ABN AMRO, which sold its worldwide sub-custody and clearing operations to Citigroup last year.

04JUL05: Northern Trust has been appointed as custodian by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for USD1bn in endowment, pension and other assets. Services provided will also include performance measurement and securities lending. Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the US’s oldest technological university.

01JUL05: There is an unhappy inevitability about the decision by JPMorgan and Schroders to end the outsourcing arrangement for UK investment operations services. A good five years after the project began, there appeared to be no early prospect of a final live date, and the work currently on JPMorgan’s operating platforms will be transferred back to Schroders. JPMorgan will make a payment to Schroders of approximately GBP20m, which is small beer compared to an estimated cost of the project – codenamed Symphony – of more than $150m.

A statement from JPMorgan said: “Since 2000, JPMorgan and Schroders collaborated on development of a new operating platform to support Schroders’ investment operations. After a rigorous review, the firms concluded that their individual operating models are no longer sufficiently aligned to continue the investment operations outsourcing project effectively.”

Bizarrely, JPMorgan claims that it is “a leading innovator in investment operations outsourcing”, with its head of worldwide securities services, Mike Clark, stating that the decision “positions JPMorgan’s business for long-term growth through a relentless focus on delivering value to clients”.

All eyes will now turn towards The Bank of New York, which is rumoured to be having major problems with one of its keystone outsourcing clients, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers. Asked on Tuesday to comment on its position with MLIM, BNY has so far failed to make a statement.

01JUL05: By now we should all know the form: you commission research only if you are absolutely certain that it will deliver the answers you want. It is therefore a happy conclusion for The Bank of New York after it commissioned Oxford Metrica to look at the financial effects of outsourcing. The study found that investment operations outsourcing adds over 10 pct to the shareholder value of European asset managers.

The study analysed the movements in the share prices of 21 European fund management companies, with combined assets of $2.1trn, following the announcement of an outsourcing deal. It found that the share price increased as a result of investor expectation of improved manager performance. This positive impact appears to be unaffected by the type of outsourcing model adopted or the size of the deal. The findings also showed that although costs may be contained in an outsourcing project, direct cost reduction is not the main driver of value.

The study also found that buyers rated long-term commitment and stability as the most important characteristics of potential service providers.

The full report, Delivering Value from Outsourcing by European Asset Managers, is available at www.bankofny.com.

01JUL05: Mellon is launching Global Professional Services (GPS), a new business that will deliver value-added consulting services to software and outsourcing clients. David Palten, current president and chief executive officer of Eagle Investment Systems, will serve in the same capacity for GPS. Palten will continue to report directly to Jack Klinck, vice chairman, and will retain his Eagle responsibilities until a successor is named.

GPS will be part of Mellon's Investment Manager Solutions (IMS) group, formed in 2004 to develop and deliver outsourcing and technology solutions for investment managers and other financial institutions. GPS becomes the fifth business in IMS — alongside Eagle Investment Systems, Global Investment Administration, Mellon European Fund Services and Russell/Mellon — and will aim to meet the needs and requests of clients for assistance in designing and redesigning business processes, building effective operations and supporting their investment processes.

The GPS business will include Eagle's existing professional services teams, Eagle ACCESS (Eagle's ASP service) and the professional service components within Mellon IMS. In the future, GPS will expand its capabilities beyond existing implementation-related services.

30JUN05: When the Diageo pension scheme last came to market, in 2000, The Bank of New York held on to the mandate that it had inherited as a legacy from its acquisition of RBS Trust Bank – but only after seeing off a very strong counterbid from Northern Trust. But BNY has not been so fortunate this time around, and the word is that all the Diageo pension schemes will be moving to Northern Trust after this year’s review. Total value of assets is thought to be in excess of USD6bn.

30JUN05: Standard Life Investments, which recently signed outsourcing deals with Citigroup and The Bank of New York, has appointed Mellon in Dublin to service its Dublin-domiciled money market fund. The USD11bn umbrella fund is made up of US dollar, euro and sterling sub-funds.

The service includes fund administration, global custody and trustee services. Global custody will be provided by ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services.

Kevin Thompson, head of money market funds at Standard Life Investments, said, “We were very comfortable with the strength of Mellon’s client servicing abilities and its ability to tailor operational solutions to our specific needs for Standard Life Investment’s AAA-rated fund.”

30JUN05: KAS BANK has struck a deal with Sweden’s Svenska Handelsbanken to offer securities servicing facilities, including clearing, settlement and custody, to its clients that are remote members of the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

29JUN05: State Street has won a mandate to service USD250m of assets for Den Norske Krigsforsikring. DNK is a Norwegian insurance company which insures interests attached to vessels, drilling rigs and other maritime concerns against war risk.

State Street will provide DNK with custody, investment accounting, foreign exchange and compliance monitoring services. Performance measurement services will also be provided by WM Performance Services. The account will be serviced from State Street’s offices in Edinburgh.

29JUN05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has been selected by the State of Georgia Office of Treasury and Fiscal Services (OTFS) as lending agent for two portfolios of US fixed income assets managed by OTFS. This is the first securities lending arrangement for OTFS since the Georgia State Legislature approved the practice last year.

JPMorgan will provide non-custody securities lending services to OTFS, the cash and investment manager for the State of Georgia.

"We chose JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services because of the firm’s long and successful experience in securities lending and their innovative approach to lending and market products,” said Stephen Caffarelli, assistant director of OTFS. “OTFS is confident that JPMorgan is capable of providing the safety, liquidity and investment income the state needs."

29JUN05: Northern Trust has appointed Will Misata as vice president, relationship management within the global fund services team. Based in London, Misata will report to Toby Glaysher, senior vice president, global fund services.

Misata will be responsible for Northern Trust's fund manager clients. He will also oversee the integration of the GFS client service team from Barings Asset Management's Financial Services Group, following its acquisition by Northern Trust last month. He joins from BISYS Fund Services where he was senior relationship manager, following closure of BISYS's UK and offshore fund services operations. Prior to BISYS, he was a senior relationship manager for JPMorgan in London, where he was responsible for the Barclays Global Investors global custody account in Europe.

28JUN05: Citigroup has entered the Australian third-party clearing market using the Shares platform from GBST, an Australian financial technology provider. The new service enables Citigroup’s broker dealer clients to trade securities listed on the Australian Stock Exchange from offshore locations.

The ASX introduced offshore market participant rules in 2004 allowing qualified foreign applicants to be trading participants without needing a physical presence in Australia. Foreign trading participants are required to clear and settle through an approved domestic third-party clearer.

28JUN05: Fortis Prime Fund Solutions has opened a representative office in Frankfurt, offering custody, administration and financing. This follows regulatory changes concerning hedge fund investment in Germany. Eric Jacobson has been appointed managing director.

Fortis Prime Fund Solutions operates from seven locations: Dublin, Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Hong Kong, Ireland, Isle of Man and Luxembourg. It also maintains sales offices in Amsterdam, Geneva, London, Luxembourg, Milan, New York and Tokyo.

24JUN05: State Street has won a mandate to service the UK’s Pension Protection Fund. The Pension Protection Fund is a statutory corporate body, established under The Pensions Act 2004, designed to assume the assets and liabilities of qualifying UK private sector defined benefit pension schemes, which are in deficit at the time of being wound up, usually as a result of the corporate sponsor’s liquidation. The Pension Protection Fund became operational on 6 April 2005.

State Street will provide investment servicing to all of the Pension Protection Fund’s assets. Services will initially include global custody, fund accounting, transition management and cash management. WM Performance Services, the European performance measurement division of State Street, will provide performance measurement services.

“We are delighted to have awarded this mandate to State Street at the end of an extensive and highly competitive selection process,” said Partha Dasgupta, chief investment officer of the Pension Protection Fund. “We feel that the quality of their team and their commitment to all aspects of the investment servicing business set them apart from their competitors, and we look forward to establishing a strong relationship.”

Mercer Investment Consulting assisted the Pension Protection Fund in its selection process. The fund’s assets will be serviced from State Street’s operations in Edinburgh.

24JUN05: Barclays Global Investors has appointed Rohit Bhagat as global chief operating officer. Bhagat will have oversight responsibility for the technology, operations, finance, strategic planning, human resources, legal, compliance and risk functions for the firm. He replaces Rich Ricci, who in January 2005 became chief operating officer of Barclays Capital, Barclays PLC's investment banking division, and Barclays Private Clients. Bhagat will report to BGI's global co-CEOs, Blake Grossman and Andrew Skirton, and be based in San Francisco. He will also be a member of BGI's Executive Committee.

Bhagat, 41, joins BGI from the Boston Consulting Group where he was a senior vice president and ran the west coast financial services practice, based in San Francisco.

23JUN05: Northern Trust has appointed Ian Headon as vice president, product management with responsibility for hedge fund, property fund and private equity fund administration. Based in Dublin, Headon will report to Mark Schoen, head of European product development within Northern Trust’s asset servicing business.

Headon will be responsible for managing and developing Northern Trust's alternative fund administration products, recently expanded by the acquisition of Barings Asset Management's Financial Services Group. He joins from AIB/BNY Fund Management where he was head of alternative investment services. Prior to AIB/BNY, Headon was at PFPC International in Dublin. 

22JUN05: HSBC Alternative Fund Services is to open a custody operation for alternative investment funds in Milan. Paolo Lippolis has been appointed manager and will oversee the development of the service, including acting as custodian for local hedge funds and funds of hedge funds, and recruiting a team of accounting specialists to offer fund administration outsourcing services from early next year.

Bank of Italy regulations, issued in April, allow managers to outsource the calculation of net asset values of their funds to their custodian.

 21JUN05: A familiar name returns to the custody market with the announcement that The Bank of New York has hired John Fiore as an executive vice president and head of investor services technology. In this newly created role, he will oversee the development and delivery of technology solutions for the bank’s custody, fund administration and outsourcing clients worldwide.

Prior to joining BNY, Fiore was president of Wayland Associates, where he provided advice to high technology start-ups on product strategies, business value proposition and marketing. He also assisted venture capital firms in the performance of due diligence on portfolio investment opportunities.

Before that, Fiore served as the chief information officer of State Street Corporation and was a management consulting partner with Coopers & Lybrand.

21JUN05: State Street has unveiled the latest release of its headquarters reporting (HQR) product. Developed primarily for multinational corporations with pension plans spanning multiple jurisdictions and multiple service providers, HQR is an automated service that provides clients with an aggregated view of worldwide investment information, including market values, asset allocations, exposures, performance results and positions.

21JUN05: Deutsche Bank has added Turkey to its network of domestic custody offices. Since obtaining a full commercial banking licence in 2004, Deutsche Bank A.S., Istanbul, has now extended its range of products to cover all transaction banking services, including custody. It will provide custody, clearing and settlement to global custodians, international broker dealers, corporates and investment funds.

Deutsche Bank now provides custody in 26 markets covering Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The operation in Turkey will be headed by Hakan Ulutas, who will report to Andrew Carter, the regional head of domestic custody services for Eastern and South Eastern Europe.

The launch of the Turkish domestic custody business comes after the complete acquisition of Bender Menkul Degerler Anonim Sirketi (Bender Securities) earlier this year.

17JUN05: It was one of last year’s classic quotes when Terry McCaughey, inveterate collector of advisory roles, announced that he was joining Interactive Technologies, Inc., a developer of fee management and billing software, as a senior advisor to the European business. “Fee billing has always been a pet subject for me,” he said with a straight face.

Will that passion be enough to keep him in post now that Fiserv, Inc. has acquired Interactive Technologies? The firm, which recorded revenue of about $10m in 2004, develops specialist billing software for banks, investment management companies, depositories, exchanges and other financial services providers, and has about 60 clients.

Fiserv is somewhat larger, providing information management systems and services to the financial and health benefits industries, including transaction processing, outsourcing, business process outsourcing and software and systems solutions. The company serves more than 16,000 clients worldwide, including banks, credit unions, financial planners/investment advisors, insurance companies and agents, self-insured employers, lenders and savings institutions. Fiserv reported $3.4bn in processing and services revenues for 2004.

17JUN05: Following Citigroup’s acquisition of ABN AMRO’s direct custody, securities clearing and fund services business last October, the bank’s global transaction services unit is relocating its client service operation to new facilities in Breda. Citigroup will continue to maintain a branch office in Amsterdam.

16JUN05: State Street has recently talked about its need to allocate resources more effectively, so it shouldn’t be surprising when it strikes deals with specialist providers. In the latest, it has acquired an interest in Northeast Retirement Services, a US-based provider of administration, recordkeeping and processing solutions for plan sponsors, financial institutions, non-profits and charities.

State Street and NRS will collaborate to provide technology solutions tailored for the needs of the bank’s non-profit and endowment and collective fund clients, including sub-account and participant level accounting and enhanced recordkeeping services. NRS technology is currently used by more than 50 State Street clients.

10JUN05: Citigroup has been selected as custodian to Man Investments’ US$7.8bn Style Fund structure. The Style Funds are one of Man's principal fund of hedge fund structures against which a significant amount of Man Investments’ alternative investment products are applied.

Laurence O'Connell, chief operating officer of Man Investments, said: “We selected Citigroup as custodian of our Style Funds because of their strong controls and, most importantly, their ability to deliver a bespoke solution to accommodate the complexities of the multi-layered Style Fund structure.”

10JUN05: Rumours of a deal between Dexia and Royal Bank of Canada have been circulating for well over a year, sparked in part by an arrangement made by the two firms to service an Insight Investment mandate in Luxembourg. But, until yesterday, both sides denied that any deal was in the pipeline.

Now they have confirmed that they have reached an agreement to combine their institutional investor services businesses in an equally owned joint venture to be named RBC Dexia Investor Services, pending regulatory and other approvals. The new company, with approximately US$1.8trn in client assets under custody, will rank among the world's top 10 global custodians. The transaction is expected to close by early 2006.

Under the terms of the joint venture agreement, RBC and Dexia, through its wholly owned subsidiary Dexia Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, will each own an equal share of the new company, resulting in net tangible equity of EUR500m. RBC Dexia IS, a holding company that will be headquartered in London, will provide strategic direction and management oversight to the operating companies.

Marc Hoffmann, CEO of Dexia BIL and member of the Dexia executive board, will be chairman of RBC Dexia IS. The CEO of the new company will be José Placido, currently executive vice-president of RBC Global Services. Other boxes have yet to be filled, although Dexia’s Michel Malpas has been appointed deputy CEO and chief marketing officer.

Operations will be conducted mainly by RBC Dexia Investor Services Bank in Luxembourg and RBC Dexia Investor Services Trust in Canada and their respective subsidiaries and branches around the world. The new structure will have 3,500 employees and operations in 15 countries. Both banks have said that there will be no redundancies as a result of the merger.

10JUN05: BNP Paribas Securities Services in Frankfurt has entered into an agreement to take over the Depotbank operations of INVESCO Bank OHG in Germany. As a result, BNP Paribas Securities Services will act as custodian for all Spezial- and Publikumsfonds where INVESCO Bank OHG was involved as custodian.

“Our decision to move out of this activity allows us to focus even more closely on our core business in line with INVESCO's global strategy,” said Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, chief executive officer of INVESCO Continental Europe. “At the local level, we will continue to expand our activities in the German market and strengthen our position consistently.”

08JUN05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has struck a deal with ADP to offer electronic distribution of corporate action materials for North American securities. The new web-based system eliminates the distribution of thousands of paper documents annually.

The new technology allows JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services to provide institutional investors with access to a comprehensive set of shareholder communications related to corporate action events for US and Canadian securities. The shareholder communication documents will be scanned by ADP and posted to their Reorg Library within 24 hours of receipt of the physical materials. The system sends an email alert that allows clients to click on a secure Internet link to view the information.

07JUN05: More trouble for BNP Paribas as it loses another salesman. SG Global Securities Services, the securities services business of Société Générale, has announced the appointment of Sébastien Danloy as global head of sales for the investors services team. He will report to Etienne Deniau, deputy head of investors services.

Danloy began his career with the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg. He then spent seven years at State Street. In 2001, he joined BNP Paribas Securities Services, holding several posts including senior sales manager in Luxembourg, head of fund administration in Dublin and head of Middle East business development in London.

06JUN05: No one knows better than the Chinese how to ride two horses at the same time. Chinaclear, the securities depository for the Chinese capital markets, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Clearstream “to explore the potential of delivering improved post-trade services to the securities markets of China”.

Chinaclear is China's sole national securities depository, clearing and registration company providing services for the two stock exchanges in Shanghai and in Shenzhen.

The agreement means that the two parties will enter into detailed discussions and share expertise on clearing, settlement and custody operations and to explore the opportunity of a combined initiative or operational linkage to deliver a wider range of efficient services to the local market.

But wait just one moment: didn’t Chinaclear hire Euroclear in 2002 to assess the competitiveness of China's operational infrastructure and make recommendations to help it develop its registration and clearing system in line with demands arising from China's securities market development? It certainly did. Although Euroclear’s analysis is only two years old, it seems the Chinese already need a fresh pair of eyes.

02JUN05: WM Performance Services, the European performance measurement division of State Street, today announced has completed a Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) verification for TriAlpha Fund Managers (Jersey) Limited. This is one of the first times a GIPS verification has been achieved by a dedicated hedge fund provider.

GIPS are voluntary, best-practice standards for the calculation and presentation of an investment firm’s performance results. Their aim is to foster consistent worldwide standards for the calculation and presentation of investment performance. This will provide greater transparency to investment management and allow for reliable direct comparisons between the performance figures of investment managers.

“TriAlpha is delighted to have achieved this GIPS verification,” said Michael Capraro, managing director of TriAlpha. “As an organisation that has been at the forefront in many aspects of investment management, this independent external verification is important both to us and our clients. Institutions, in particular, want total confidence that their chosen asset manager is completely transparent and has systems and procedures in place to measure its investment performance accurately. We are finding that GIPS is no longer ‘nice to have’, but rather is becoming an absolute requirement with institutional and high net worth investors.”

02JUN05: BISYS has been selected by Needham & Company, LLC to provide mutual fund services for 4,300 accounts representing approximately $250m in assets under administration. Needham is an investment banking and asset management firm focusing on emerging growth industries and their investors. BISYS will support the Needham Growth Fund, the Needham Aggressive Growth Fund and the Needham Small Cap Growth Fund with fund accounting, fund administration, transfer agency, legal, compliance, and regulatory support, and distribution services. BISYS Alternative Investment Services also supports a group of Needham's alternative investment products.

01JUN05: When Roger Booth abruptly left Deutsche Bank in 1999, just three months after his appointment as head of global custody services, there were already signs that the German bank had no clue about how to run the business. Deutsche sold the operation to State Street, and now Booth has emerged as the new chief executive of the Pensions Management Institute, a professional body that promotes professional standards in the UK pensions industry. Booth joins from The Housing Corporation where he was a financial regulator for social housing for the last three years.

31MAY05: State Street has established a representative office in Beijing, its first presence in mainland China.

State Street has been developing its links with China since 1997, working with the Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, China Asset Management Company and E Fund Management Company. In 2002, State Street established a partnership with Zhejiang University to jointly develop technology solutions for the financial services industry.

27MAY05: Northern Trust is showing no signs of slowing down in its hiring spree. Its latest appointment is Ray Bloom, who has joined as a senior vice president and head of UK corporate pension funds in the client service team. He will report to Nigel Bloomer, head of client services. Bloom joins from The Bank of New York, where he was a senior relationship manager for UK pension fund clients.

27MAY05: BISYS has been selected by ICON Advisers to provide mutual fund servicing. Based in Colorado, ICON Advisers is a valuation-based asset management firm with approximately $3.6bn in assets under management. BISYS will support the ICON Funds, comprised of 17 funds and approximately $2.7bn in assets, with fund accounting, financial administration, legal, compliance and regulatory services.

27MAY05: Mellon Financial Corporation has completed the previously announced sale of its human resources consulting and outsourcing businesses to Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.

The purchase price has been adjusted from $445m to $405m due to sluggish HR consulting revenues. This will result in an expected after-tax loss on the transaction of approximately $105 million, which will be reflected in discontinued operations.

27MAY05: Nice to see that State Street is making peace with former adversaries. It has struck a deal with Data Explorers Limited, providers of an independent securities lending performance measurement service. Data Explorers' Performance Explorer product will be offered to State Street's securities lending customers, providing them with the ability to evaluate lending returns against a broad universe of industry peers.

Data Explorers is a son of Securities Finance International, which used to compete with State Street’s own performance product, SL PerformanceAnalyzer, launched in 1998. Performance Explorer is a web-based service that compares individual lending results against the aggregated data of a broad, customizable universe of industry peers. Each week, Data Explorers collects aggregated data on more than 64,000 securities lending transactions for approximately 55,000 securities and more than 4,000 portfolios. Recent figures compiled by the service indicated total lendable assets at almost $4.5trn and total on-loan balances at more than $1.3trn.

26MAY05: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services has been appointed to act as fund accounting agent for Aviva Funds Services, the Luxembourg administration company of Morley Fund Management.

This latest deal follows the move last year by Morley and JPMWSS to establish an administration service for fund managers and their clients. As part of the 2004 deal, Morley transferred 190 employees to JPMWSS and migrated to the firm's HiPortfolio-based investment operations platform.

Morley is the UK-based asset management division of Aviva plc, the UK's largest life assurance group, and manages GBP128bn of assets. AFS has EUR3bn of assets under administration in Luxembourg.

The deal will involve the transfer of all fund accounting activities undertaken by AFS across a number of fund ranges to the Luxembourg operation of JPMWSS, including eight AFS staff. The transfer enables AFS to focus on its core business of fund distribution and shareholder services.

JPMWSS has been the preferred service provider of AFS since 1991, when its predecessor Commercial Union entered the market.

26MAY05: SS&C Technologies has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Financial Interactive, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, CA. FI provides an investor relationship management (IRM) and fund profiling infrastructure to alternative fund managers, fund of funds managers and fund administrators. FI's FundRunner product offers contact management, reporting, performance analytics, compliance, and account management as a licence or web-based solution. In addition, FundRunner is used to organise and track all constituent fund data and due diligence information.

26MAY05: RBC Global Services has expanded its custodial agreement with Mavrix Fund Management Inc. to include outsourcing of the fund valuations for its 25 funds.

“To help us with our plans for business expansion and launching new funds, we needed to find a partner who had the experience and technology to provide first-class service and products that would meet our needs,” said Ray Steele, Mavrix chief operating officer and chief financial officer. “Our established partnership with RBC made them a natural choice. We already had the confidence in their client service abilities and RBC had the insight and knowledge of our business to make the transition simple and easy.”

25MAY05: Brown Brothers Harriman has appointed William Locke and Crossan Barnes to its securities lending team. Locke joins BBH as vice president in the client service group, while Barnes will be working as regional sales manager for North America.

Locke joins from State Street, where he was most recently vice president of securities finance, servicing several of the bank’s largest securities lending relationships. Previously, Locke held positions at various financial institutions including Trema Inc, BankBoston Corporation, and Bank of America.

Barnes also comes from State Street, where he worked as securities finance client service officer.  Prior to this experience, he worked for BankBoston.

25MAY05: Northern Trust, which is leading the field in terms of cross-border pension fund pooling, says that it has developed the first proprietary solution to allow multinational companies to commingle US ERISA defined benefit retirement plan assets with assets from non-US subsidiaries in a single offshore pooling vehicle. The solution has been designed to comply with all ERISA regulations.

“Shortly after we launched the first cross-border pooling vehicle in 2002, US-based multinationals began asking Northern Trust to pioneer a capability that would enable their ERISA plans to participate,” said Kathy Dugan, Northern Trust’s multinational product manager. “The new Northern Trust ERISA Solution for Cross-Border Pension Pooling enables more multinational companies to capitalise on the benefits of bringing cross-border assets together for investment management purposes. By pooling assets from subsidiary pension plans across the globe, including the US, a multinational can more effectively control manager selection and investment risk, simplify administration and gain economies of scale.”

Northern is currently implementing tax-transparent vehicles - the Irish Common Contractual Fund (CCF) and the Luxembourg Fonds Commun de Placement (FCP) - for clients who want to offer global equity mandates through a pooling vehicle to their pension plans worldwide.

25MAY05: The Brown Shipley Solus fund range has gone live with the transfer agency services of International Financial Data Services, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street and DST.

Janet Carey, director of operations, Brown, Shipley & Co Limited said: “The decision to outsource our administration to IFDS was taken as an integral part of our strategy of improving our service to our investors. Our aim is always to provide the very highest standards of administration and support reflecting the values of Brown Shipley and we believe that the high quality service provided by IFDS will help us meet our goals.”

25MAY05: Northern Trust has made two new appointments:

Allan Nedergaard joins as vice president, Nordic business development for Northern’s institutional custody and asset servicing business. Nedergaard will have direct responsibility for growing the bank’s global custody and asset servicing client base in the Nordic markets. Based in London, he will report to Anne-Lise Winge, senior vice president and head of European business development. He joins from Danske Bank, where he worked for 20 years, most recently in the securities services division as head of sales and client relations.

Sarah Hurst joins as vice president, senior relationship manager in the European multi-national client services team, within its London-based asset servicing business. She reports to Aïda Molineux, head of European multi-national client services, and is responsible for managing Northern’s asset servicing relationships with multi-national pension funds and family office clients in the UK and continental Europe.  She joins from The Bank of New York, where she spent six years and was senior relationship manager for custody clients in the UK, Eastern Europe and South Africa.

25MAY05: Standard Life Investments has appointed The Bank of New York as its preferred service provider for a range of mutual fund administration services. This decision follows the announcement in April that SLI was entering into a period of detailed evaluation with BNY. As part of the agreement approximately 60 of SLI’s mutual fund administration team will transfer to the new service provider, effective from 16^th June 2005. BNY will provide this service from its Edinburgh office.

Keith Skeoch, CEO of Standard Life Investments, said: “Standard Life Investments has delivered award winning service to its clients ever since its inception seven years ago. The Bank of New York shares our passion in providing service excellence and is committed to establishing a world-class funds administration business based here in Edinburgh. Their global presence and administrative expertise will assist us greatly in introducing new products across multiple markets. This agreement should ensure that as our business grows our customers continue to receive the high level of service they associate with Standard Life Investments’ products.

“This deal also offers a great opportunity for those of our people who are transferring to The Bank of New York. They will be provided with exciting development opportunities in an environment where their skills and expertise represent the core activity of the business. They should prosper as The Bank of New York expands its business both in Edinburgh and around the globe.”

25MAY05: Natexis Banques Populaires has become the first French custodian bank to use Euroclear’s FundSettle platform for the order routing, settlement and asset servicing of its clients’ cross-border and offshore investment funds.

Norbert Cron, head of financial services at Natexis Banques Populaires, said: “FundSettle offers us the best way to reduce our processing costs and operational risk exposure. Thanks to FundSettle’s high level of automation, we can improve service levels for our clients and provide a service offering that is more competitive than ever.”

20MAY05: Mellon is to administer the middle and back office for the managed accounts business of Clover Capital Management. Among the services that Mellon will provide are opening accounts, transaction support, account reconciliation, performance measurement support, account maintenance, investor reporting and billing support.

Headquartered in Rochester, NY, Clover Capital Management, Inc. is an independent, employee-owned, SEC-registered investment adviser. Founded in 1984, Clover manages approximately $2.5bn in assets for individuals, employee benefit plans, endowments and foundations.

“We were impressed with Mellon’s commitment to the managed accounts industry and believe that Mellon’s team is a great fit culturally with Clover Capital Management,” said Stephen Carl, chief operating officer for Clover. “Mellon’s knowledgeable and experienced staff has demonstrated the ability to provide valuable middle- and back-office services. We believe these services will serve as a strong foundation for Clover’s managed accounts business. We also expect to benefit by leveraging the capabilities of Mellon’s scaleable infrastructure, particularly its integrated imaging and workflow system.”

20MAY05: John Trundle will become managing director and head of risk management for the Euroclear group, from 6^th June. Trundle, who joins Euroclear from the Bank of England, will become a member of the Euroclear Group management team.

Currently head of the business continuity division at the Bank of England, Trundle began his career with the central bank in 1979. He has held several different positions within the Bank, most recently serving as head of the market infrastructure division from 1996 to 2003, before taking on his current role.

Peter Sucaet, managing director, who is currently head of risk management at Euroclear, will become head of audit, replacing Paul Taylor, managing director, who will become head of banking at Euroclear Bank. Paul Taylor will replace Michael Taylor, managing director, who has decided to return to London to pursue other interests outside Euroclear.

18MAY05: Hard to see how The Bank of New York will derive much added value from its new mandate as global custodian for $6bn of assets for the G13 group of UK building societies. BNY will also be issuing and paying agent, and succeeds the Bank of England.

The G13 group, led by Nottingham Building Society, includes the following societies:

Cambridge Building Society

Cheshire Building Society

Cumberland Building Society

Dunfermline Building Society

Furness Building Society

Kent Reliance Building Society

Newcastle Building Society

Norwich & Peterborough Building Society

Nottingham Building Society

Scarborough Building Society

Stafford Railway Building Society

Stroud & Swindon Building Society

West Bromwich Building Society

Dean Carter, treasurer of the Nottingham Building Society, said: “We came to a collective decision to appoint The Bank of New York after a thorough review of the sector’s leading players, and our current and future requirements. The bank showed itself to have the most comprehensive solutions in the field, and we were impressed by the strength of their product set, their focus and the extensive relationships they have developed across the sector. We are confident that we have made an excellent choice and look forward to working with the team.”

18MAY05: David Planden has been promoted to executive director, western Canada, for CIBC Mellon. Planden replaces John Hay, vice president, relationship management, western Canada, who retired in March of this year. Hay joined CIBC Mellon in 1997, through its acquisition of Canada Trust's custodial business, as manager of pension customer service.

17MAY05: Brown Brothers Harriman has announced new executive positions in Europe. Assets held on behalf of European clients account for approximately 50% of BBH's $1.2trn in custody. The new European positions will be filled by the following BBH executives:

Jeff Holland – Head of European Sales and Relationship Management

Laura Hoult – Head of Client Solutions

Bill Rosensweig – Head of Private Account Services

Wendy Brooks – Head of Human Resources in Europe

16MAY05: Mellon is to administer the back office for Copper Rock Capital Partners, an institutional asset manager specializing in growth strategies. Services will include account opening, transaction support, account reconciliation, performance measurement support, account maintenance and investor reporting.

“Mellon has an excellent reputation for providing top-notch service,” said Tucker Walsh, chief executive officer of Copper Rock. “Also, we were impressed with Mellon's scaleable infrastructure that will serve us as we grow our business.”

Founded in February 2005, Boston-based Copper Rock employs a bottom-up investment approach that is designed to outperform the Russell 2000 growth index as well as a peer group of small cap growth portfolios over a full market cycle. Copper Rock Capital Partners has established a strategic alliance with Old Mutual Asset Management. Under the terms of the alliance, Old Mutual will contribute financial and operational support in exchange for an option to acquire a 60% stake in Copper Rock in 2006. Among the services to be provided by Old Mutual AM are access to working capital, legal, compliance and risk management systems, technology, HR and financial management resources and sales and marketing support.

13MAY05: It’s a brave soul who sets up an independent hedge fund administrator, taking on the combined might of the global custodians and prime brokers. But Tom Chang, who has announced the formation of OpHedge Investment Services, LLC, has at least had the good sense to find backers with deep pockets. Oak Hill Platinum Partners, LLC and Soros Fund Management, LLC are strategic investors in OpHedge, as well as the firm's first two clients.

Chang, formerly a managing director and head of sales in Asia for Goldman Sachs, is OpHedge’s CEO. Ironically, Oak Hill Platinum Partners grew out of Long Term Capital Management, which also spawned what will be a major competitor for OpHedge, GlobeOp.

12MAY05: F&C Asset Management has consolidated transfer agency for its UK open-ended fund range with International Financial Data Services, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street and DST.

The consolidation follows the merger last year of F&C and Isis. The new consolidated business will operate on an outsourced basis with IFDS providing investor and distributor services on behalf of F&C to retail and institutional investors, financial advisors and distributors.

Dominic Sheridan, director retail operations, F&C Asset Management said: “F&C welcomes the opportunity to continue its long-standing relationship with IFDS. IFDS has established itself as the UK’s premier open ended transfer agency service provider and has consistently demonstrated the values F&C expects from a service provider. Its systems and services continue to meet the high standards that F&C wants to provide its customers and set the benchmark for investment administration processing.”

11MAY05: The Bank of New York has appointed Mark Westwell as managing director and senior client executive in the UK fund managers client management team. Based in London and reporting to Daron Pearce, head of UK fund managers, Westwell will have responsibility for managing and developing relationships with some of the bank's largest fund management clients. Westwell joins BNY after ten years with the investor services division of JP Morgan Chase.

11MAY05: State Street has won two mandates to service GBP950m in assets for the AMEC Staff and Executive Pension Schemes, the UK pension arrangements of AMEC plc. State Street will provide the GBP900m AMEC Staff Pension Scheme with a range of services including custody, investment accounting, cash management and foreign exchange. The bank will also provide the GBP50m AMEC Executive Pension Scheme with custody and fund accounting services. All the assets will be serviced from State Street’s offices in Edinburgh. AMEC was assisted by Mercer Investment Consulting in its selection of a global custodian.

“State Street offered us an excellent range of core and peripheral custody products,” said Garry Lloyd, corporate pensions manager at AMEC plc. “We were also impressed by their understanding of client needs, and their flexible approach in meeting these needs suited us very well.”

10MAY05: It will be a lively AGM in Frankfurt for Deutsche Börse on 25^th May, following the decision at yesterday’s supervisory board meeting to get rid of the chairman, Rolf Breuer, chief executive officer, Werner Seifert, and three additional members of the supervisory board.

Seifert is to leave the company immediately and Breuer has been asked to identify a successor, who will be an external recruit. Until an appointment occurs, chief financial officer Mathias Hlubek will be coordinating the executive board. Breuer is expected to have gone by the end of the year. This is a dramatic turnaround from the position taken by Deutsche Börse on 26^th April, when it flatly rejected a motion by Morgan Stanley to oust Breuer. “The Executive Board of Deutsche Börse AG rejects the motion by Morgan Stanley Bank AG to remove Dr. Breuer as a member of the Supervisory Board of the Company at the Annual General Meeting on 25 May 2005 and proposes to vote against the motion,” it said at the time.

09MAY05: Citigroup has launched HedgeLink, an interactive web-based operating platform for both hedge fund manager and investor reporting. Citi also announced that it has completed the installation of a fully integrated, multi-currency offshore administration system consisting of securities, general ledger, share registry and reporting modules.

“Our goal is to become the administrator of choice in the alternative investments marketplace, and this launch underscores our commitment to providing clients around the world with the finest service, products and technology available,” said Ede Conyers, Citi’s global product head of alternative investment services.

HedgeLink has been designed to offer hedge fund clients the capability to drill-down to account-level detail from summary views; the ability to download reports in PDF, Excel or Word formats; investor access to statements and other fund documents such as the offering memorandum; and help desk support to ensure ease of access.

Later this year, Citigroup expects to enhance the service to include onshore partnership funds, portfolio reporting and the capability to function as a platform for separately managed accounts.

09MAY05: ADP Clearing & Outsourcing Services, a division of Automatic Data Processing, Inc., has signed a long-term contract with National Investor Services Corp, an affiliate company of TD Waterhouse Investor Services, Inc., for ADP's new Operations Outsourcing service. Under the terms of the agreement, ADP will provide NISC with outsourcing services for a variety of clearing and custody related functions. NISC will remain a separate self-clearing broker owned by TD Waterhouse Group, Inc.

Tim Pinnington, chief executive officer, TD Waterhouse Group, Inc., said: “ADP's distinctive new offering allows us to rely on the strengths of their transaction processing, while benefiting from the associated cost savings.”

05MAY05: Peter Christmas has joined Pershing Limited, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York, as managing director and chief relationship officer. Christmas has responsibility for new business development in Europe. Pershing Limited, an affiliate of Pershing LLC, provides clearing and financial services outsourcing solutions to more than 100 financial organisations in Europe.

Previously, Christmas was head of UK sales and relationship management at BNP Paribas Securities Services. He has also worked for Mellon, State Street and JP Morgan.

05MAY05: ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services has appointed Robert Korsanke as senior sales manager for its Frankfurt office. He will report to Peter Adams, head of sales. Korsanke will work as part of a team of two, concentrating on Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Prior to ABN AMRO Mellon, he was Deutsche Bank’s head of sales for Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the trust & securities services division, where he focused on conglomerates and multinational clients.

05MAY05: Brown Brothers Harriman has launched a new foreign exchange research website, providing users with 24-hour coverage of the market as well as links to other BBH products and services.

The new website - http://salsa.bbh.com/fx - contains streaming indicative spot rates for seven major currency pairs as well as the latest in FX market news headlines. In addition, the site features fundamental analysis on the latest global economic developments, technical charts and trading ideas, and a market calendar of upcoming economic indicators along with consensus forecasts. The site also provides information, demos and links to BBH’s proprietary FX trading products, FX WorldView and FX OrderView.

04MAY05: Australia’s gain is the UK’s loss, as Kate Homewood moves with RBC Global Services to become regional head of relationship management for the business in Sydney. Rob Chowdhury moves to become director of business development. Homewood's appointment is effective immediately and she will permanently relocate to Sydney on July 1, 2005. Chowdhury's appointment is effective at the end of May.

Homewood will assume responsibilities for the RBC Global Services Australia relationship management strategy with key clients, as well as supporting growth within the client base. Prior to this role, she was director of relationship management for RBC Global Services in London.

Chowdhury joins RBC Global Services from Omgeo after a 12-year career within the Thomson group. Most recently based in Singapore, Chowdhury was responsible for the creation and execution of Omgeo's strategy to grow their market share with global custodians. Prior to this, he was sales director at Thomson Financial in Sydney focusing on investment managers and brokers.

04MAY05: State Street has become the exclusive provider of custody and performance measurement services to the West Sussex County Council Pension Fund. Expanding an existing relationship with the fund, State Street now services GBP740m of the fund’s assets.

Under the terms of the agreement, State Street will provide custody for the fund’s assets, while performance measurement will continue to be provided through WM Performance Services. West Sussex was advised by Thomas Murray in its custody review.

04MAY05: Stena Line (UK) Pension Scheme has awarded KAS BANK a GBP30m custody mandate. KAS will provide core custody and investment accounting services to Stena Line’s global equity fund, which is managed by AllianceBernstein. Stena was advised by Mercer Investment Consulting.

03MAY05: HSBC Securities Services has appointed Amit Taylor as business development manager in the European sales team. This is a new position reporting to Richard Hale, head of sales, HSBC Securities Services Europe. Taylor joins from IBM Business Consulting Services (previously PwC) where he worked in the investment management consultancy business in Europe.

27APR05: The Bank of New York has entered into an agreement with Mizuho Trust & Banking Co. and Mizuho Bank to expand its current asset management and securities servicing businesses in Japan.

The companies will work together to target institutional clients, offering BNY’s alternative investment products in the Japanese market. BNY will provide Mizuho Trust with execution capabilities, distribute a selection of its mutual funds through Mizuho’s retail network and collaborate on the development and distribution of new asset management products in both markets. BNY has been active in Japan for 30 years.

26APR05: Merseyside Pension Fund has appointed State Street to provide custody, securities lending, cash management and foreign exchange services to its $6bn fund. Performance measurement services will continue to be provided by WM Performance Services.

The fund provides administration to all local authority employees within the county boundaries of Merseyside, as well as a number of admitted organisations, and also administers the firefighters’ pension scheme.

26APR05: Perry Pero, vice chairman and head of corporate risk management at Northern Trust, will retire in the third quarter of this year. Pero joined Northern Trust in 1964. He assumed his current responsibilities in January 2004. Prior to that, he served as chief financial officer from 1988 to 2004, and held a variety of positions in commercial banking and credit policy, and was chief credit officer from 1984 to 1988. He was named a senior executive vice president in 1992, and vice chairman in 1999.

Pero will be succeeded by Jana Schreuder, executive vice president and group manager for public entities and institutions at Northern Trust, who will also serve on Northern Trust's management committee. Prior to her current responsibilities, Schreuder served as president and chief executive officer of Northern Trust Retirement Consulting, L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Trust until it was sold in 2003. She began her career at Northern Trust in 1980, and has served in various management and leadership roles throughout the corporation, including department head of securities processing operations, director of e-commerce, and head of PFS national services.

25APR05: The Bank of New York has signed a definitive agreement with Instinet Group to acquire Lynch, Jones & Ryan, Inc., a provider of commission recapture services to institutional investors. LJR is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Instinet, part of Reuters, and covers 1,400 plan sponsor funds with more than $2.2trn of assets. The purchase price is $159m in cash, with the deal expected to close by the end of June.

25APR05: Mellon has appointed Harley Murphy as its first country manager for Ireland. The new country manager position has been created in recognition of the rapid growth of Mellon’s Irish fund administration, trustee and global custody businesses, which administer funds of approximately US$20bn and employ more than 60 in Dublin.

Murphy returns to Mellon Ireland after two years co-ordinating Mellon’s businesses in Scotland and having overseen the implementation of Mellon European Fund Services’ UK client services centre in Edinburgh. He takes up his new post in July and will report to George McKay, executive director, business development, for Mellon European Fund Services in London.

Reporting to Murphy will be John Maguire, who takes up the position of head of fund administration services in Dublin, and Anne King, managing director of Mellon Trustees (Dublin) Limited, who retains all her present responsibilities. Stuart Kent, who has been appointed business development manager, will continue to manage client relationships.

Kevin Potts is resigning as managing director of Mellon Fund Administration (Dublin) Limited with effect from the end of June but will remain as a non-executive director.

25APR05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Wendy Scott as relationship manager for the securities industry group. Scott is based in London and reports directly to Maroulla Sullivan, head of securities industry group for London and Tokyo. She joins BNP Paribas from Standard Chartered Bank, where she worked for nine years. She was most recently a senior relationship manager, covering network financial institutions.

25APR05: Euroclear has established a dedicated relationship management team in London for primary market participants. The new team will be responsible for all aspects of relationship management with lead managers and issuers’ agents across the various Euroclear entities in the international marketplace.

The new team, which reports to Philippe Laurensy, director and group head of Euroclear’s primary market relationship management teams, is headed by Dan Kuhnel, who joined Euroclear from the London office of Clearstream International on 1 April.

25APR05: Standard Life Investments has made a preliminary agreement with The Bank of New York with a view to adopting it as a provider of a range of mutual fund administration services.

William Littleboy, operations director, Standard Life Investments, said: “The mutual funds industry in the UK has been changing rapidly over recent years. In particular the advent of fund supermarkets and other platforms changes the way these products are sold and administered. Change is also being driven by regulations, legislation and the slow move towards harmonisation of retail investments across Europe. These changes have a major impact on the business of Standard Life Investments. After assessing the respective merits of a number of leading service providers, the Standard Life Investments Board has decided to enter into a ‘handshake agreement’ with The Bank of New York for the outsourcing of a range of mutual funds administration services. Our people deploy a high level of skill, expertise and professionalism in delivering award winning service to our clients. As a leading global supplier of transaction services, The Bank of New York has substantial scale, commitment and management depth. Going forward, we believe that Standard Life Investments and The Bank of New York will both benefit from deploying them together. Equally, those people will ultimately benefit from being inside a business built around their expertise and disciplines.”

There will now be a period of further evaluation and negotiation before a final decision is made. Should Standard Life Investments decide at the end of this process to proceed, then those people deemed to be ‘in scope’ – approximately 65 – will be transferred to the Bank of New York in Edinburgh.

25APR05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has signed contracts for additional business with its existing client F&C Asset Management plc. As part of this appointment, BNP Paribas Securities Services will provide retail investment trust administration, custody and investor services for the newly merged F&C and ISIS Asset Management plc.

Dominic Sheridan, director of retail operations at F&C, said: “Investment trusts represented an important part of the heritage of both ISIS and F&C and they are now a key part of the merged company’s overall retail product offering. With a range of investment trust savings schemes, including the only investment trust based Child Trust Fund, the appointment of a single partner for the provision of investment trust custody and administration services is a significant step in the development of our business.”

25APR05: HSBC Securities Services has appointed Nick Thomas as head of specialised sales, responsible for developing opportunities with new and existing clients for securities lending, foreign exchange and cash management products. This is a new position, reporting to Paul Stillabower, head of business development for Europe.

Thomas joins from RBC Global Services where he was most recently responsible for building and managing both the European and Asian securities lending, global foreign exchange and cash management services for institutional clients. Prior to joining RBC Global Services in 1997, he worked in RBC’s capital markets/treasury division.

25APR05: JPMorgan has combined its investor and issuer services capabilities under the name JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services. The integrated business brings together the former JPMorgan investor services and institutional trust services businesses, and will provide custody and investor services as well as securities clearance and trust services to clients globally.

JPMorgan Treasury & Securities Services, the firm’s global transaction processing and information services franchise, now comprises two core businesses: JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services and JPMorgan Treasury Services.

Worldwide Securities Services will operate through four business units:

Securities, including global custody, fund services and outsourcing, headed by Neil Henderson

Clearance, including American Depository Receipts, clearance & collateral management, securities collateral management, government and equity services, headed by Liz Nolan

Securities lending and market products, headed by Avi Stein

Trust, including global debt and asset servicing, headed by Diane Eshleman

Regionally, Ramy Bourgi will head client management, customer service, sales strategy and product management in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Bourgi will share the role of EMEA regional head with Liz Nolan who, in addition to leading the global clearance business, will also manage all infrastructure for the combined business. Laurence Bailey will head the Asia Pacific region, with responsibility for client management, customer service, sales, and product management in the region.

Other key positions include Fred Bromberg as global sales executive, Tom Christofferson as global and North American client executive and PJ Hilbert as global customer service executive.

25APR05: John Liftin will be joining The Bank of New York as vice chairman, general counsel and secretary. Liftin will join from Prudential Financial, Inc., where he has served as general counsel since 1998. Liftin is a member of the legal advisory committee of the New York Stock Exchange and is a former chair of the American Bar Association’s committee on the federal regulation of securities. He currently chairs The Pro Bono Partnership, an organisation that provides free legal services to non-profit organisations serving the public interest.

25APR05: Northern Trust has been appointed as global custodian and trustee to the C$238m pension plan of Hiram Walker Canadian Retirement Fund.

13APR05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Kay Hayre as global relationship manager covering financial intermediaries. Hayre is based in London and reports to Chris Rowland, head of sales and relationship management for UK financial intermediaries. She joins from IBM UK Ltd, where she worked for seven years. She was most recently a client manager within the financial services business unit.

13APR05: HSBC Securities Services has hired Dominic Rieb-Smith as a new global business development manager in the European sales team. He will report to Richard Hale, head of sales for HS BC Securities Services Europe. He joins from Omgeo.

12APR05: Vontobel Asset Management, Inc. has selected Citigroup to provide operations service support for its retail separate accounts.

“Due to Citigroup’s historical presence and capabilities in the Separately Managed Accounts space, they were a natural choice to provide operations support service for us,” said Fredy Nyffeler, chief financial officer, Vontobel Asset Management, Inc. “We believe Citigroup will continue to deliver a best-in-class operations model to allow us, both now and in the future, to profitably and efficiently expand in the SMA marketplace.”

Last December Citigroup launched a new set of services for asset managers looking to outsource the operations of their separately managed accounts. The modular solution automates services ranging from portfolio manufacturing process to sponsor connectivity.

11APR05: J. Carter Bacot, former chairman and chief executive officer of The Bank of New York, has died. Bacot served as chairman and chief executive officer from 1982 to 1998 and remained on the board of directors until 2003.

Bacot was the architect of the present-day BNY, overseeing a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions that enabled the bank to dramatically expand its operations both in the US and abroad. Chief among them was the merger with the Irving Bank Corporation in 1988, which at the time was the largest bank merger ever undertaken. While Mr. Bacot was chairman, BNY grew its assets from $11.5bn to $60bn, and net income from $58m to $1.1bn.

Mr. Bacot joined BNY in 1960 and at various times served as the head of the bank’s investment research and personal trust departments. He was named vice chairman of the holding company in 1975 and president in 1979.

11APR05: Meanwhile, another custody legend is making an unexpected comeback. Marsh Carter, former chairman and chief executive officer of State Street Corporation, has been appointed as the new chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Following his retirement from State Street in 2001, Carter became a lecturer in leadership and management at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Carter, 64, had been a director of the NYSE since December 2003.

08APR05: The Bank of New York has suffered a further set-back to its expansion plans in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Last September BNY started negotiations with Old Mutual Asset Managers (South Africa) and Standard Bank of South Africa about the establishment of a South African-based joint venture investment administration company. But the talks have now been called off after regulators decided that it would be it impossible for Standard Bank to participate as a shareholder in the proposed administration business because the Financial Services Board regarded the bank's equity participation in the venture as being in potential conflict with its obligations as a trustee.

“Without Standard Bank's participation, we believe that the proposed business is less attractive,” said Henk Beets, chief operating officer for Old Mutual. “Our financial analysis leads us to conclude that equity ownership in a smaller scale operation is not a route we want to follow.”

Old Mutual, which had planned to outsource to the new venture, said it “remains convinced of the benefits of outsourcing its mid- and back-office administration activities. It will therefore continue to seek a professional, focused administration service provider that has the required capability. But it will do so on the basis of an arms-length lift-out of its own operations, rather than as a shareholder in the venture, said Beets.

07APR05:  Euroclear Bank has launched an enhancement to its securities lending and borrowing infrastructure. A new pricing structure is also set to be introduced that could reduce clients’ intra-day borrowing costs by as much as 30%.

From 11th April 2005, two new real-time process windows – one in the early morning and one in late afternoon - will be added to the existing lending and borrowing programme. These additions will further facilitate transaction flows between Euroclear Bank clients and non-Euroclear Bank clients, and help to mitigate so-called ‘gridlock risk’, i.e. the risk of trades failing due to reduced settlement liquidity as a result of the lack of synchronised settlement timings between different settlement systems.

In addition to the reduction in intra-day fees for borrowers, lenders will benefit from increased compensation for end-of-day loans of securities eligible for processing in the late-afternoon window.

06APR05: JPMorgan Investor Services continues to load up its portfolio with what appear to be low-value assets. It has been selected by Old Mutual Financial Network as global custodian for the $14bn general account portfolio of its operating life insurance companies, but has not been appointed to offer anything more than custody and "short-term liquidity management services".

06APR05: BNP Paribas Securities has appointed Sophie Cardoso as senior relationship manager in Paris. She reports to Gilliane Philip Courtines, global head of relationship management for French institutional investors.

05APR05: Aberdeen Asset Management has awarded BNP Paribas Securities Services a new fund administration mandate. This signals Aberdeen’s consolidation of all fund administration of its investment trust retail business with a single provider.

04APR05: ABN AMRO Mellon has finally established a presence in Asia Pacific: ABN AMRO Mellon Singapore Pte. Ltd. It has appointed a business development manager for Asia, Hong Hung Thiam, who has over a decade of experience in the custody and settlement markets in Asia, most recently at Deutsche Bank in Singapore as vice president sales and client relations.

01APR05: After nearly four decades at The Bank of New York, Alan Griffith, vice chairman since 1994, has announced his plans to retire. Griffith, 62, was elected vice chairman of The Bank of New York Company, Inc. in December 1994. Prior to assuming his current position, he served as executive vice president of the company and president of its principal subsidiary, The Bank of New York, from 1990 to 1994. In addition to his role as vice chairman, for the past decade Griffith has been responsible for the company's international banking sector. He has served on the company's board of directors since 1990. 

31MAR05: Marco Homburg has joined the institutional investor sales team at BNP Paribas Securities Services. He will be based in Amsterdam and report to Dietmar Roessler, head of coverage for institutional investors in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

31MAR05: Few people can have collected more job titles than Jack Klinck, a vice chairman of Mellon Financial Corporation and chairman of Mellon Europe. Klinck, who has been in London since 2001, is returning to Pittsburgh this summer, and is to relinquish his role as head of Europe, handing over to Jon Little, chief executive of Mellon Global Investments (MGI), and Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Investment Management, as co-chairs.

31MAR05: Brian Turburville and Alexandra de Jonge van Ellemeet have joined the client management team at JPMorgan Investor Services.

30MAR05: Clearstream continues to win plaudits for its tri-party repo services. The 2005 Global Custodian survey has rated Clearstream as the leading global provider of tri-party repo services to the international securities market. The survey reviews a wide range of service elements, from collateral optimisation through to reporting and communications.

30MAR05: Euroclear Bank has announced a reduced sliding-scale tariff for FundSettle. From 1^st April 2005, STP transactions via FundSettle will cost between EUR3 and EUR15 per order, which is 10-25% below current prices, depending on volumes. Using the carrot and stick principle, FundSettle will also apply a flat fee of EUR25 to any fund transaction not processed on an automated STP basis, "reflecting the higher cost of processing".

29MAR05: The Bank of New York has established a new office in Sydney through its subsidiary, BNY Securities Australia Limited, as part of its strategy to expand its presence in the Asia Pacific region.

29MAR05: HSBC Securities Services has hired Jamie Wise as a new global business development manager in the European sales team. Wise joins from Linedata Services Group, where he helped to build the client base in Europe over the past four years.

24MAR05: Northern Trust has appointed Thomas Benzmiller as managing director of the Northern Trust Company of Hong Kong, Limited.

24MAR05: Euroclear Bank is to introduce a new consolidated tariff for the settlement of equity trades in three Euronext markets: Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. Clients will benefit from greater sliding-scale fee discounts by applying the tariff to the aggregate of their equity-settlement volumes, by instruction type, across the three markets.

24MAR05: The Grand River Hospital Fund has appointed Northern Trust as global custodian and trustee to its C$232m pension plan. Randy Esford, vice president and chief human resources officer of Grand River Hospital Corporation, said: "We are delighted to appoint Northern Trust as global custodian and trustee following an in-depth review process. A major factor in our decision to appoint Northern Trust was its advanced technology capability and innovative approach to service delivery."

23MAR05: Northern Trust has received official approval from the China Banking Regulatory Commission to open a representative office in Beijing. Kevin Tan, who has been with Northern Trust for 12 years, becomes chief representative in China and will oversee the bank’s business development initiatives in the Chinese market from the new Beijing base.

22MAR05: TNO, the Dutch foundation pension fund, is to outsource asset administration to KAS BANK. The fund’s total net assets amount to approximately EUR1.5bn.

21MAR05: Client fallout continues from the decision by UBS Global Asset Management to withdraw from the UK custody market. Derbyshire County Council, a client of UBS Global AM, has consolidated custody of the four separate portfolios of its GBP1.45bn pension fund with ABN AMRO Mellon.

21MAR05: Northern Trust has appointed Sue Baines as vice president, business development within its global fund services team in London. She will work alongside Jeremy Hester, and will report directly to Penelope Biggs, head of corporate and institutional services, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

17MAR05: Mellon has finally dealt with long-running problems with its human resources consulting and outsourcing businesses, which have been underperforming for several years. Mellon has signed a definitive agreement to sell these units to Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS). ACS will employ almost all the 4,000 employees in Mellon’s HR consulting and outsourcing businesses, and is also acquiring the operations and infrastructure associated with those businesses.

16MAR 05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Angela Billick as a sales and relationship manager in its institutional investors team in New York. She reports to Marcia Rothschild, head of North America sales and relationship management for institutional investors.

16MAR05: Clearstream Banking AG has launched additional real-time processing between 0130 and 0530 for nighttime settlements. ‘Real-Time STD’ allows exchange between participants at Clearstream Banking Frankfurt and the two international securities depositories, Clearstream Banking Luxembourg and Euroclear.

15MAR05: The Golden LEAF Foundation has selected Mellon to provide custody, accounting, performance analytics and cash management services. Golden LEAF is the non-profit corporation that administers half of the money received by the State of North Carolina from its settlement with cigarette manufacturers. It has more than $400m in assets.

14MAR05: Barely a year after he joined Northern Trust as a sales manager responsible for the Netherlands, John Gout has been appointed as ABN AMRO Mellon’s senior sales manager for the Benelux countries. Based in the Amsterdam HQ of ABN AMRO Mellon, Gout will focus on new institutional clients, reporting to Peter Adams.

10MAR05: State Street has been appointed to provide investment operations services to the fund complexes of Columbia Management Group, Bank of America’s asset management arm. The appointment follows Bank of America’s acquisition last year of FleetBoston Financial and expands State Street’s existing relationship with Columbia Management as service provider for their funds.

08MAR05: AEGON Asset Management UK has entered into exclusive negotiations to transfer a number of its key back office functions to Citigroup. The proposed agreement, which is subject to further due diligence and contract negotiations, would see AEGON Asset Management transfer its fund accounting and administration functions to Citi from August 2005.

07MAR05: RBC Global Services has recaptured its position as the top-ranked global custodian, according to the 2005 R&M Consultants’ custody survey. RBC pipped Societe Generale, last year’s winner. A big surprise was that Pictet dropped to fifth place, with Mellon maintaining its greatly improved service offering and moving to third from seventh. State Street crashed to last place, confirming reports that it still has some serious issues to deal with following the integration of the Deutsche GSS business.

For more details, go the Analysis section.

03MAR05: Custodians aren’t the only ones interested in the hedge fund administration space. SS&C Technologies, Inc. has acquired all of the membership interests in Eisner^fast LLC, a fund accounting and administration affiliate of Eisner LLP, a US accounting firm, for $25.3m in cash. Eisner^fast provides back-office accounting and administration services to onshore and offshore hedge and private equity funds, funds of funds and investment advisors. Located in New York, Eisner^fast provides over 250 funds with an internal accounting infrastructure, including portfolio accounting, investor accounting, books and records, tax reporting and performance analysis.

03MAR05: The Foundation General Pension Fund Wegener has chosen KAS BANK as global custodian. In addition to core custody services, Wegener will also use performance measurement and compliance monitoring and will outsource its investment administration to KAS. The transfer will take place on 1 April 2005. The Wegener Pension Fund was established in 1995, with total net assets of approximately EUR635m.

02MAR05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Aon Asset Management to provide custody, fund administration, securities lending and transfer agency services for USD1.5bn of assets. In addition, BNY Brokerage will provide Aon Asset Management Limited with commission recapture services.

Launched in 2002, Aon Asset Management Limited is a limited liability company incorporated in England and Wales and is a subsidiary of Aon Corporation.

02MAR05: AXA Investment Managers has completed the transfer of its UK investment operations to State Street. In December 2004, State Street was appointed to provide investment operations for EUR300bn of AXA IM’s assets under management. These services cover middle office functions including fund accounting, performance measurement services, fund administration and investment operation support.

As a result of the deal, more than 100 AXA IM employees have joined State Street in London. The transfer of AXA IM’s fund administration and investment operations support in France and Germany was completed in December 2004.

02MAR05: JPMorgan Investor Services has been selected by Baloise Anlagestiftung fuer Personalvorsorge (BAP), a Swiss foundation, to provide global custody and fund accounting services. JPMorgan Suisse SA will act as the depositary bank in order to meet Swiss regulatory requirements, which stipulate that custodian services in Switzerland must be provided by a local bank.

02MAR05: SEI, the independent provider of asset management and investment technology solutions, is to launch a new model for global wealth management, designed specifically to help private banks meet the emerging needs of the new wealthy.

02MAR05: Northern Trust has appointed Justin Chapman and Iain Scott as senior vice presidents within its worldwide operations team. Based in London, they report directly to Sheryl Muniz, senior vice president, global securities processing.

01MAR05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has been appointed as sole global custodian to IONIS, a French firm specialising in the pension and retirement sector. The deal covers €7.2bn of assets divided amongst 330 funds. Migration is expected to take place during the autumn of 2005.

01MAR05: State Street has appointed Sinclair Scholfield as head of the wealth manager services team in the UK. Scholfield, who will be based in London, will report to Kevin Connolly, senior vice president and head of global private client services. He will be responsible for managing the delivery of State Street’s services to high net worth customers in the UK as well as developing product and servicing capabilities.

24FEB05: It has been a long time coming, but Royal Bank of Canada has finally made its breakthrough deal in the UK fund administration sector. Old Mutual Asset Managers has appointed RBC Global Services as its UK fund administrator, global administrator, fund accountant and global custodian. RBC will work alongside The Royal Bank of Scotland as the trustee.

24FEB05: Further success for State Street in the outsourcing sector. It has been appointed by Brandywine Asset Management, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Legg Mason, Inc. to provide managed account outsourcing services for "several billion dollars" in assets.

24FEB05: JPMorgan Investor Services has launched JPMorgan E-Tax, a web-based tax service that provides access to breaking international tax news, updates on tax industry developments, trends, policies and treaties; reports on tax rates, exemptions, capital gains; and the latest tax forms necessary worldwide.

23FEB05: JPMorgan Investor Services continues to pick up mandates in Europe, but how valuable are they? The latest win looks like the sort of low-rent transaction that the old Chase would have declined to bid for. Denmark's Fionia Bank has selected JPMIS to provide international sub-custody services for its non-Nordic custody portfolio.

23FEB05: Guy Schuermans will become chief executive officer and general manager of Euroclear Nederland, and chairman of its management team, from 1 March 2005. Peter Sneyers, who is currently fulfilling these roles, will transfer to Euroclear Bank in Brussels to head up the firm’s corporate actions and tax service area.

22FEB05: Deutsche Börse paid more than EUR3bn for Clearstream, so it will be relieved that the business has become such a major money-spinner for the group. Clearstream now generates about a quarter of earnings before interest and tax, having produced EBIT of EUR116.7m for 2004 out of a group total of EUR458.7m. 

18FEB05: CRESTCo, the UK and Ireland settlement system operator, has announced a tariff reduction equivalent to GBP11m per annum. The changes will start to take force from 1^st April 2005.

18FEB05: Thomas Murray, the industry consultant and ratings agency, has launched an on-line request for proposal for the evaluation and selection of service providers in the hedge fund and fund of hedge fund business.

The Thomas Murray questionnaires, together with the e-RFP Tool to issue questionnaires and hold the responses, are available to industry participants via http://ais.thomasmurray.com.

17FEB05: Jim Phalen is to return to State Street as executive vice president and head of its North America investment servicing group. Phalen, a former head of State Street’s benefits services division, returns to the company’s senior management team after spending five years as chairman and CEO of CitiStreet, its joint venture with Citigroup. He will report to Jay Hooley, executive vice president and head of State Street’s investment servicing group worldwide.

17FEB05: The French settlement process is a little more secure following the establishment of a collateral fund worth more than EUR430m to cover any default payments while offering stronger settlement guarantees. As a result, the RELIT+ settlement platform now fully complies with the CPSS/IOSCO recommendation requiring central securities depositories operating a revocable net settlement system to implement risk controls that, at a minimum, ensure timely settlement in the event that the participant with the largest payment obligation is unable to settle.

17FEB05: Deutsche Börse is to extend its central counterparty service for equities trading on Xetra and the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange to cover transactions in foreign stocks and ETFs. In addition, OTC transactions on Xetra are also scheduled to be included in the CCP service.

10FEB05: State Street Global Markets, the investment research and trading arm of State Street, has appointed two senior managers to its Global Link team. Rebecca Schechter becomes managing director, product strategy & development, and Douglas Mehne has been appointed managing director, Global Link sales and client service. Both will report to Simon Wilson-Taylor, managing director and worldwide head of Global Link at State Street.

09FEB05: Midwest Medical Insurance Company has selected State Street to provide investment accounting services for $250m of general account assets.

09FEB05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Stephanie Lanigan as senior relationship manager for the AMP Group, for whom the bank provides full back office outsourcing services.

08FEB05: Euroclear has announced an impressive operating performance for 2004. Annual turnover was up 19.9% to EUR307.1trn, with custody assets up 10.2% to EUR13.1trn, which apparently includes more than EUR70bn in net new business won from ‘the other ICSDs’.

08FEB05: State Street has appointed Jean-François Courville to head State Street Canada. Courville will be responsible for State Street’s investment management, investment servicing and global markets businesses in Canada. He will also oversee client management and regulatory matters. State Street has more than 700 employees in offices located in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

04FEB05: When ING and The Bank of New York announced a major sell-side outsourcing agreement in 2002, it looked as if that market was finally set for serious growth. But, through no fault of BNY, the deal never happened. ING’s strategic focus changed, and with it the need for a full-service solution.

04FEB05: The timing of a new deal between Deutsche Börse and the Irish Stock Exchange could not be better. The ISE and Deutsche Börse have agreed to extend their existing Xetra agreement, due to expire at the end of 2005, by a further five years. More importantly, Deutsche Börse and ISE intend to provide the Irish equity market with a central counterparty service. Eurex Clearing will perform risk management for transactions through the ISE’s Xetra electronic order book.

03FEB05: Northern Trust and Insight Investment, the asset management arm of HBOS, have entered into exclusive negotiations for Insight to outsource its back and middle office investment operations to Northern. Under the proposed agreement, Northern will provide trade matching, confirmation and settlement, investment record keeping, entitlement processing, pricing, asset set-up, reconciliation, client reporting, valuations and performance analysis. Between 85-90 Insight staff will transfer to Northern Trust.

03FEB05: The Skandia UK Group has selected Infomediary, the integrated communications outsourcing solution from Brown Brothers Harriman, for the automation of third party fund orders and confirmations from Skandia’s multi-manager platform. Skandia will use Infomediary to connect to cross-border fund providers and transfer agents over the SWIFT network using a combination of SWIFT’s ISO 15022 and ISO 20022 XML message standards.

02FEB05: Steve Bernstein, who was made head of securities services for Citigroup in 2003, is to retire. Bernstein was a Salomon Brothers veteran and was drafted in by Frank Bisignano, head of the global transaction services group.

01FEB05: Northern Trust has been appointed to provide trust, accounting and custody services for Iowa State Bank, an independent banking company based in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa State Bank services over 500 trust accounts with over $450m in assets.

31JAN05: What is going on at National Custodian Services, the custody business of National Australia Bank? Following the departure of Patrick Liddy, NCS global head of sales, Tony O’Grady, the general manager who runs NCS, has announced his intention to leave in March. NCS quit the UK last year, transferring its clients to The Bank of New York.

31JAN05: Mowlem Pensions Fund has appointed KAS BANK to run a GBP60m custody mandate. KAS will provide custody and investment accounting services to Mowlem’s global equity portfolio, which is managed by Alliance Bernstein. Mercer Investment Consulting carried out the review.

31JAN05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has made some staff moves within its global liquidity services division. Richard Thompson, currently head of the agency lending desk in London, will be taking on a global sales and relationship role. In this position he will cover principal/agency lending, foreign exchange and cash management products. He will also be responsible for directly managing GLS relationships with global clients. Based in London, he will continue to report to Sarah Fotsch, head of global liquidity services.

27JAN05: The retirement of Tom Swayne, the head of JPMorgan Investor Services since 1999, has been on the cards for some time, and its timing – in the middle of the bonus season – had long been predicted. In and of itself, Swayne’s departure would make little difference to the business. But the announcement that he will not be replaced is a significant milestone in the fortunes of JPMIS. Instead of bringing in a new head, JPMIS is to have a part-time leader, Michael Clark, who will add this to his existing duties as head of the institutional trust services business. Competitors looking for signs of weakness will doubtless point to the decision as another indication of the bank’s lack of commitment to investor services, following on from its recent move to merge the outsourcing business with securities operations. SEE ANALYSIS PAGE FOR THE DETAILS BEHIND THIS DECISION

26JAN05: The Bank of New York has acquired Continental Fund Services, a Luxembourg Professional of the Financial Sector. Terms were not disclosed.

26JAN05: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Barbara Emmerson as head of trustee services in Dublin. She joins from Citibank where she was a vice president in the trustee services division. Prior to that she held a number of trustee and custody positions at companies including Northern Trust, Harris Trust and Bank of Montreal. She will report to Hervé Bruyère, global head of depositary bank in Paris.

26JAN05: The Bank of New York and Standard & Poor's have set up a strategic alliance that will enable investment managers to obtain S&P’s investment research and corporate data products through execution services provided by BNY Securities Group broker-dealers.

26JAN05: Brown Brothers Harriman has appointed Thomas E. Berk as a partner. This brings the total number of general partners to 40.

26JAN05: You sometimes wonder if the grief of rebranding is really worth it. The Bank of New York, which is run by some pretty level-headed people, now has to endure endless jokes and dubious comments as it unveils its new logo, reproduced here so that you can prepare your sarcastic remarks for your next encounter with a BNY employee.

25JAN05: Northern Trust, which launched its UK fund administration service in July last year, has won its first client. KBL Investment Funds Ltd, which trades under the name Solus and is a subsidiary of private bank Brown Shipley, has appointed Northern to provide fund accounting and global custody services to the Solus funds, with assets under management totalling GBP325m.

25JAN05: The Bank of New York has been selected by The Hartford Mutual Funds as a third-party securities lending agent. Additionally, the bank has been awarded cash collateral reinvestment business associated with other Hartford securities lending agents. The Hartford Mutual Funds are sponsored by The Hartford Financial Services Group.

24JAN05: JPMorgan Investor Services is making structural adjustments to its outsourcing business that may suggest it is confident that it has finally overcome its problems with implementation of the Schroders’ mandate.

21JAN05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Prudential Asset Management, part of the UK’s Prudential PLC, to provide fund services for Prudential’s International Opportunities Fund.

21JAN05: BNP Paribas Securities Services is to go live in Milan with an outsourcing solution for Fondaco SGR SpA mutual funds. The range of services offered covers fund accounting and administration, depository bank, custody and investment compliance monitoring, and regulatory reporting to the Italian authorities.

21JAN05: Reflecting the up-front costs of implementing outsourcing mandates, The Bank of New York recorded an 11% rise in non-interest expenses in 2004. Net income rose by 24% to $1,440m. Tom Renyi, chairman and CEO, said: "We did experience a noticeable uptick in expenses as we recognised costs associated with the conversion of new outsourcing wins, hiring of customer service personnel in some of our faster growing businesses, higher incentive compensation in light of the sharp rebound in performance in the last two months of the quarter as well as continuing high costs associated with responding to regulatory inquiries."

21JAN05: Stewart Adams has been appointed by ABN AMRO Mellon to its sales team in the UK and Ireland. Adams joins from State Street, where he was head of Scotland in the UK sales and marketing team. Reporting to Peter Adams, head of sales, Adams will divide his time between offices in Edinburgh and London.

20JAN05: A hedge fund administrator is this season’s must-have fashion accessory for custodians. In the industry’s latest deal, Mellon has signed an agreement to acquire DPM, a US-based hedge fund administrator with $30bn in assets for 91 clients. Its services also include middle- and back-office outsourcing and transparency services. Terms of the transaction, scheduled to close by the end of the first quarter of 2005, were not disclosed.

19JAN05: Analysts will probably not be too impressed with State Street’s progress in the fourth quarter of 2004. The world’s largest custodian has yet to deal with the problem of its reliance on market-related revenues, which contributed to a downgrade by Fitch last year. Servicing fees were flat from the third quarter ($570m vs $568m), whilst securities lending ($58m vs $48m), foreign exchange ($111m vs $75m) and brokerage ($43m vs $31m) were all up. Operating expenses rose to $992m from $906m, leading to net income of $184m ($177m). This is against the background of a reported $500bn rise in assets under custody during the fourth quarter. GSS continued to make a marginal contribution: revenue of $141m and expenses of $118m, with merger and integration costs for the fourth quarter at $12m and $62m for 2004.

19JAN05: Citigroup is starting to make progress in Germany. At the end of last year, Citi won the first licence from the regulator, BaFin, to act on behalf of hedge funds via a master KAG structure. Now Citigroup Deutschland KAG has launched the first German global macro single hedge fund, managed by arsago Global Hedge Holding GmbH. The arsago Global Macro-CI trades predominantly in the interest rate and equity index, as well as in the currency and precious metal markets.

18JAN05: State Street has been appointed to provide global custody, investment accounting, securities lending and performance measurement services for the pension plans of ChevronTexaco Corp. in the UK, The Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium for $2bn in assets. State Street currently services $7bn in assets for ChevronTexaco’s pension plan in the US. JPMorgan Investor Services, which was appointed as master custodian for ChevronTexaco’s US plan in 2001, is the outgoing custodian.

18JAN05: The Bank of New York is strengthening its relationship with ING Investment Management through a letter of intent to provide a middle-office trade processing outsourcing service for the EUR67bn asset base of ING IM’s operations in the Hague.

14JAN05: Anyone who has met Patrick Liddy, the former global head of sales for National Australia’s custody business, will not easily forget him. Liddy, who has resigned, was based in the UK for several years and his non-nonsense approach to business was quite a contrast to the more restrained style of many competitors. Insiders suggest that Liddy was dissatisfied after the closure of the National’s UK custody business last year. No word yet on what he will do next.

14JAN05: Paul Bodart, executive vice president of The Bank of New York, has been appointed to the board of Euroclear plc and Euroclear SA/NV. He takes the seat vacated by Tom Perna, the BNY executive who resigned last year.

13JAN05: Here’s a story that was slipped out with the minimum of publicity in the week leading up to Christmas, suggesting that one side of the transaction wasn’t overly keen on making a big noise about it. Xchanging, the outsourcing specialist which owns the European Transaction Bank, has signed a contract with Citibank Privatkunden AG & Co. KGaA to handle Citibank Germany's retail securities transaction processing. The contract is due to be operational in the second half of 2005.

13JAN05: Brown Brothers Harriman has appointed Joachim Krinke as vice president responsible for new business FX sales in Europe. Before joining BBH, Krinke worked at Westpac Institutional Bank as senior manager for European foreign exchange sales.

13JAN05: Ed O’Brien has been appointed as treasurer of State Street Corporation. O’Brien will have responsibility for State Street's balance sheet, liquidity and interest rate risk management activities worldwide and, in this capacity, will report to Ed Resch, State Street’s chief financial officer. He replaces Stefan Gavell, who has assumed a new role within State Street as global head of regulatory affairs.

13JAN05: JPMorgan Investor Services has appointed Michael Leary to oversee JPMorgan Compliance Solutions, a service designed to support the chief compliance officers of its clients. Leary will act as a liaison between clients' CCOs and JPMIS operational teams. During his 11 years at JPMIS, Leary has managed a variety of fund servicing functions, including treasury, compliance, board governance and financial tax services.

13JAN05: The New York Mercantile Exchange has signed up for JPMorgan Message Express, the firm's message management service that provides data mapping, messaging and connectivity to industry utilities. NYME, the largest physical commodity futures exchange, will use the service to automate its daily margin settlement process.

11JAN05: The Bank of New York has secured a significant foothold in the French market with its agreement with Natexis Banques Populaires (NBP). BNY has been selected by the wholesale arm of France’s fifth largest banking group to provide global custody services for NBP’s €80bn of assets held in custody across 48 countries. BNY will also appoint Natexis as its French sub-custodian for a large proportion of French assets in the bank’s custody.

10JAN05: The Bank of New York has been appointed by Abbey, the UK financial services firm recently acquired by Banco Santander Central Hispano, to act as global custodian for GBP30bn of assets managed by its investment arm, Abbey National Asset Management. The assets were previously held by four custodians, including BNY.

10JAN05: Profuturo GNP has appointed State Street to provide investment services, including global custody and accounting. Profuturo is Mexico's largest locally-owned pension fund administrator, and the third largest Mexican pension manager overall, with more than $4bn in assets. Mexico privatised its pension system in 1997 and last year announced that it would allow the nation's pension funds to invest part of their $40bn of assets in global stocks and bonds.

07JAN05: Will KAS BANK be a takeover target in 2005? Remember when The Bank of New York took a strategic stake of 4.9 per cent, a move that got no further after BNY’s alliance with ING? With just EUR245bn of assets under custody, KAS looks like an attractive target for those custodians looking to grow their European franchise.

07JAN05: Clearstream, which is the subject of much speculation as its owner, Deutsche Börse, bids for the London Stock Exchange, has put in a strong performance for 2004.

04JAN05: Following receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals and consents, Euroclear plc has completed the group’s corporate restructuring. Euroclear SA/NV is the new holding company for the group’s national and international central securities depositories. The new company owns the group’s shared securities processing platforms and delivers services to the group’s depositories, including development of its technology platform.

04JAN05: State Street has been appointed by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Pte Ltd (GIC) to provide investment operations services for fixed income and equity trades and positions in the United States and Canada. State Street will provide a range of back and middle office investment servicing solutions to support GIC's North American fixed income and equities trading business, from investment centres in London, New York and Singapore. The transition of fixed income assets has started and the equities portion will be transferred in 2005.

17DEC04: Cazenove Fund Management Limited has appointed JPMorgan Investor Services to provide global custody, fund administration, fiduciary and other related services. The mandate covers assets valued at GBP7bn. Transition is expected to begin in April 2005.

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."

17DEC04: BNP Paribas Fund Services, the fund administration arm of BNP Paribas Securities Services, has taken over the fund administration functions of BNP Paribas Gestión de Inversiones, the Spanish fund manager of BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNP PAM). BNP Paribas Securities Services is also the central transfer agent for BNP PAM Spanish Funds, while continuing to act as local transfer agent for the Spanish distributors of PARVEST funds.

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.

17DEC04: Euroclear Nederland, the central securities depository of the Netherlands, has received approval from the Dutch Ministry of Finance to extend its admission criteria to Dutch and other investment firms based in the European Union. Previously, these firms were ineligible to become direct members of Euroclear Nederland. From 1 January 2005, investment firms that become members will be able to settle their transactions and hold their positions directly with Euroclear Nederland. This includes over-the-counter transactions, as well as transactions executed on Euronext Amsterdam and the Dutch trading service of the London Stock Exchange.

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."

13DEC04: As planned at the time of his appointment, Jeffrey Tessler has moved up to become CEO of Clearstream International. He succeeds André Roelants, who becomes chairman of the board. Roelants in turn replaces Robert Douglass, who has been appointed honorary chairman and senior advisor. This gives Clearstream a unique place in the industry, with three chairmen: Edmond Israel, the founder of Cedel, also carries an honorary title.

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).

10DEC04: There is never a trace of irony in the announcements by Euroclear Bank – or, for that matter, SWIFT – that they are to return money to their clients, those very firms that gave them the money in the first place.

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.

09DEC04: AXA Investment Managers has completed outsourcing of its investment operations to State Street. The deal covers middle office functions, fund accounting, performance measurement services, fund administration and investment operations support. More than 300 AXA IM employees, and more than 1500 portfolios valued at EUR300bn, have been transferred to State Street.

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.

09DEC04: CIBC Mellon has announced the largest business win in its history, and one of the largest in Canada. Manulife Financial Corporation has appointed it to act as its sole custodian for general, segregated and mutual funds in Canada, a mandate totalling C$60 billion in assets. Conversion of Manulife’s assets to CIBC Mellon will begin in December 2004.

"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.

09DEC04: Senior management changes in the treasury and securities services division at JPMorgan. Peter Lighte moves from his role as head of institutional trust services (ITS) to the newly created role of TSS international client coverage manager, reporting to Mark Garvin, chief administration officer for TSS international.

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.

09DEC04: Citigroup Global Transaction Services is launching services for asset managers looking to outsource the operations of their separately managed accounts. Available in early 2005, these services will form part of the bank’s outsourcing offering to asset managers.

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."

08DEC04: Fitch Ratings, the international rating agency, has assigned ABN AMRO Mellon Global Securities Services B.V. a long-term rating of AA- and a short-term rating of F1+.

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.

01DEC04: Not before time, BNP Paribas Asset Management is handing over its middle office and fund administration functions to its sister company, BNP Paribas Asset Servicing, a division of BNP Paribas Securities Services. Between now and January 2005, BNP PAM staff responsible for these functions will transfer to BPAS.

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

01DEC04: The Bank of New York has appointed Mark Snowdon as head of custody sales within the European investor services division. He is responsible for developing the global and domestic custody sales business for clients based in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, reporting to Richard Beaven, managing director of European investor services.

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.

01DEC04: Clearstream's battle to restore its reputation after a string of damaging allegations has taken a big step forward after the investigative authority in Luxembourg formally cleared Clearstream of any wrongdoing. This follows detailed investigation after false allegations were published in the books entitled 'Révélation$' and 'La Boîte Noire'.

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.