2008 NEWS archive

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23DEC08: Northern Trust has been named global custodian for the Labourers’ Pension Fund of Central and Eastern Canada. Northern will provide custody and related services for the CAD1.9bn portfolio. RBC Dexia is believed to be the outgoing custodian.

22DEC08: Nancy Wolcott has been named president of PNC Global Investment Servicing. She will report to Stephen Wynne, chief executive officer. Wolcott was executive vice president and chief operating officer, and will remain responsible for the investor services and relationship management groups. She directs the transfer agency, sub-accounting, banking transaction services and print mail business lines, as well as relationship management for the firm’s largest clients.

19DEC08: Northern Trust, which recently announced plans to cut 450 jobs, is upgrading its operations in Australia. The firm has signed a deal with Sydney-based Bravura Solutions Limited to support a new tax and investment accounting solution for superannuation funds in Australia.

Northern Trust also announced appointments to strengthen its local tax and accounting capabilities, as well as business development efforts for the region. The appointments follow the approval of a banking licence by The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in October. Northern has operated through a representative office in Melbourne since June 2007, and recently opened new offices.

Jeremy Hester has relocated to Melbourne as regional head of business development. Hester, a 15-year sales veteran of Northern Trust, will continue the role he began earlier this year when he was dividing his time between London and Australia.

Bernie McGrath joins from ANZ as head of fund accounting. Samantha Seater, an Australian, joins from Northern Trust's fund accounting group in Europe, where she worked in a variety of functions in both Dublin and London.

19DEC08: Has any investor services provider suffered more than KAS BANK from the credit crunch? Having been caught up in the Lehman collapse, and reported sharply lower operating profits in the third quarter, it has now admitted that it has an indirect exposure to Madoff. “The extent of the potential loss cannot yet be established precisely, but will not exceed EUR9m net,” KAS said in a statement. Standard & Poor’s has lowered its long-term rating of KAS BANK from ‘A’ to ‘A-’ and its short-term rating from ‘A-1’ to ‘A-2’. The outlook remains ‘stable’.

19DEC08: Despite losing its product management chief, Gunjan Kedia, to State Street earlier this year, it is business as usual at BNY Mellon, which has announced two significant product developments.

The firm has enhanced its OTC derivatives services by providing automated trade affirmation and confirmation to investment managers and financial institutions in the US and Europe. The enhancements also enable BNY Mellon to deliver daily, automated OTC position reconciliation and market value reconciliation with counterparties.

On behalf of its clients, BNY Mellon can now match economic terms of the transaction on trade date, confirm activity through straight-through processing and reconcile positions, and perform valuation comparison. BNY Mellon has licensed the use of Markit Trade Manager, a trade risk management platform. Additionally, BNY Mellon has licensed MarkitPortRec platform, an automated position reconciliation and valuation comparison service. Markit also will provide complete connectivity to industry utilities such as Markit Wire and DTCC.

Separately, the bank has launched Islamic fund services, an expanded suite of fund administration solutions for European collective investment funds that is designed to meet the needs of Shariah-compliant portfolios. The services bundle investment restriction monitoring, custody, trustee, fund accounting, and transfer agency. The product suite meets the operational needs of traditional Islamic equity funds, Sukuk and Murabaha funds.

19DEC08: IFDS has gone live with a range of transfer agency, record-keeping and back-office support services for B2B Trust. B2B Trust, which services more than 14,000 financial professionals with products including investment and RRSP loans, broker deposits, self-directed accounts, banking services and Laurentian Bank broker mortgages, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Laurentian Bank of Canada.

17DEC08: When Citi bought Forum in 2003, market commentators dismissed the transaction with the observation that its only merit was to make the bank the largest fund administrator in Poland. Forum turned out to be an almost unmitigated disaster, delivering almost no benefits to Citi other than some much-need experience on how – or how not - to structure an acquisition. Earlier this year, Forum’s Portland, Maine facility was closed down, with operations transferred to the BISYS fund servicing hub in Columbus, Ohio.

Now one of the last vestiges of the Forum deal has been excised, with the announcement that Bravura Solutions has acquired Citi’s Warsaw-based transfer agency software platform, and its employees, for USD21m.

Bravura, the Australian supplier of wealth management applications and professional services, has reached an outsourcing agreement for the provision of transfer agency technology services to Citi’s securities and fund services business in Europe. Citi commented that one of the outcomes of the deal will be to reduce operating expenses. In 2006, Bravura bought Rufus, BNY Mellon’s European transfer agency platform, for GBP32m.

17DEC08: The Maaf insurance group has renewed and increased its custody mandate with Société Générale Securities Services. Maaf Group’s mandate with SG was increased by assets from third party banks to reach a total of EUR6bn. The portfolio transfers took place at the end of November.

17DEC08: Northern Trust has enhanced its quarterly client reporting services for asset owners. New customised reports focus on areas including the impact of strategic and tactical asset allocation decisions on meeting appropriate fund objectives and the monitoring of individual manager mandates across all asset classes. Also included is liability benchmarking, which aims to support trustees and pensions professionals in evaluating their assets versus liabilities.

15DEC08: Patric Foley-Brickley, one of Citi’s longest-serving managers in the securities services business, has left the bank. Foley-Brickley, who joined Citi in the UK from Chase in 1993, was heavily involved in the firm’s EMEA expansion, and was appointed as senior EMEA sales strategist last year, responsible for selling the most complex and high-value transactions. He had recently added client-facing responsibilities for the alternative investment sector in EMEA.

15DEC08: Northern Trust has become the third of the major US trust banks to announce job cuts. Saying that “it is taking a number of actions to better position the company for improved profitability and continued global growth during these difficult economic conditions”, Northern expects to eliminate 450 positions and will take a pre-tax fourth quarter charge of approximately USD20-25m. The actions are expected to generate approximately USD50-60m million in annualised pre-tax savings. Job cuts announced by the big three trust banks now total approximately 4,000.

11DEC08: Citi has been appointed by Old Mutual Capital, Inc., the US-based asset manager, to provide fund support services to its new Irish-domiciled UCITS fund. The multi-year contract includes accounting, administration, transfer agency, custody, trustee, compliance, cash management and FX services.

Julian Sluyters, CEO and president of Old Mutual Capital, investment manager to Old Mutual Global Funds plc, said: “We selected Citi for its global operations platform and established regional presence as the servicing arm for the new Irish-domiciled UCITS Fund. As we expand our global footprint and widen the scope of services, we look to Citi as a partner in growth and provider of innovative and efficient solutions.”

Denver-based Old Mutual Capital operates the full service mutual fund and managed account platform of Old Mutual Asset Management, the US subsidiary of the UK’s Old Mutual plc.

11DEC08: J.P. Morgan has launched a billing solution for separately managed accounts that provides asset managers with a faster and more accurate way to collect fees. The module calculates all the billable events that occur in the SMA process at each of a manager’s sponsor relationships and allows asset managers to independently calculate their expected revenue from sponsors.

J.P. Morgan developed the solution with Redi2 Technologies, a software provider that focuses exclusively on fee billing solutions for the financial services industry, and Vestmark Inc., a software company.

09DEC08: State Street has expanded its relationship with the UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to include risk services for its GBP2bn in assets. State Street was appointed in 2005 to provide global custody, fund accounting, transition management, cash management and performance measurement services for PPF.

“Since our inception in 2005, the scale and complexity of our business structure has changed significantly,” said Martin Clarke, PPF executive director of financial risk. “Having worked together with State Street over the past three years, we felt strongly that they were best placed to provide high quality support and solutions for our evolving business needs and future growth.”

09DEC08: Old Mutual Fund Managers has outsourced its UK investor record keeping to IFDS on a full-service basis, including servicing of distributors and financial institutions, as well as the investor and advisor call centre for its UK range of OEICs.

Paul Nathan, chief operating officer of Old Mutual, said: “As one the UK’s leading fund administrators, IFDS has a reputation for high quality operations and service platform. We look forward to working with IFDS as we manage and grow our business.” Old Mutual outsourced UK fund administration to RBC Dexia in 2005.

09DEC08: Whilst many US banks are desperately trying to show their more humble side, there is no such false modesty at J.P. Morgan. Whenever it wins an award, the firm’s marketing department cannot control its hubristic urges. In its latest effort, it has crowed that it has been “crowned” as European pension fund custodian of the year at the 2008 ICFA awards. The press release also included a strange quote from Francis Jackson, head of EMEA client management and business development for J.P. Morgan’s investor services business, who said that the firm was “delighted to have been recognised by our peers”, even though the judging panel did not include a single recognisable “peer”.

08DEC08: Akgun Dervis has joined Aviva Investors as global head of fund administration and supplier management, based in the UK. He was with Credit Suisse Asset Management in London, where he worked in a similar capacity.

08DEC08: BNY Mellon has appointed René Boettcher as chairman of the Latin America region. He will lead the development and implementation of the company's business strategy and chair its Latin America management committee. He will also continue as head of client management for Latin America, reporting in that role to Bill Williams, head of developing markets client management. Karen Peetz, chief executive officer of financial markets and treasury services, will be the executive committee sponsor for Latin America. The bank, which has been conducting business in Latin America for over 100 years, has representative offices in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, as well as local operations in Brazil, and holds a banking license in Mexico.

08DEC08: Euroclear Bank will implement a EUR55m programme of fee reductions in 2009, to be implemented in two phases. With effect from 1 January 2009, the bank will reduce safekeeping fees on Eurobonds. In April 2009 safekeeping fees for Asia-Pacific, Canadian and US domestic debt will be cut, in addition to reductions in tariffs for cross-border transactions involving Belgian, British, Dutch, French and Irish domestic securities. For both 2007 and 2008, Euroclear claims that overall tariff reductions reached more than EUR100m.

04DEC08: State Street is to cut approximately six per cent of its global workforce. The reductions of approximately 1,600-1,800 positions will occur principally between now and the end of the first quarter of 2009. The job losses will largely be achieved by consolidating middle and senior management ranks. About two-thirds of the reductions will occur within North America with the remainder in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

In connection with severance, benefits and other costs, the company expects to record total pre-tax charges of approximately $325 million to $350 million or $0.51 to $0.55 per share. The action is expected to generate approximately $375 million to $400 million in annualised savings.

Last month BNY Mellon announced plans to cut its global workforce by four per cent, representing 1,800 people.

04DEC08: Northern Trust has introduced new performance and analysis capabilities for clients investing in private equity, hedge funds and other alternative assets. New features include an expanded range of resources and functions available online and specialised tools to assist limited partners in administering private equity portfolios.

Northern Trust's online performance analysis tool, Fundamentals, now provides access to IRR measures and on-the-fly analysis of the funding status and growth of private markets assets, including private equity and real assets. In addition, Fundamentals includes on-demand access to sophisticated metrics that more accurately reflect hedge fund performance, such as skew-ness, kurtosis, maximum drawdown, upside variance, Sterling ratio and Calmar ratio.

Northern Trust has also strengthened the Private Monitor brand of private equity investor services with the deployment of Private i 5.0 from the Burgiss Group. Clients can track and analyse performance, and obtain ad hoc reports on various IRR analyses, modified internal rate of return (under varied assumptions), funding and distribution ratios, and benchmark internal rate of return analysis. In the Private Monitor suite, Northern also offers the Burgiss Group's browser-based application, Private Informant, which provides look-through reporting of partnership company holdings.

02DEC08: BNY Mellon’s alternative investment services group has hired Andrew Dollery and Roman Seydoux. They will be based in London and report to David Aldrich, managing director of EMEA alternative investment and broker-dealer services. Dollery and Seydoux join from Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley respectively and will work in sales and relationship management.

02DEC08: Northern Trust has launched a customised reporting solution for investment consultants, integrating client-specific reporting on the firm’s web portal, Passport.

02DEC08: BNY Mellon has unveiled its new trustee board reporting service. The package combines asset liability matching information and analytics alongside core performance and risk reporting to support trustee boards and investment committees in evaluating the progress of their investment programmes.

01DEC08: BNY Mellon has been good at keeping hold of its senior management team, with Gunjan Kedia one of the few to leave since the merger. Now another top manager has gone, with Pat Curtin, one of the heads of US asset servicing, stepping down. Curtin, who came from the BNY side of the merger, has not made any announcement about where he is going next. As an interim measure, Fred Ricciardi will assume Curtin’s duties, with the firm planning a longer-term consolidation of the US asset servicing business lines under Vince Sands.

25NOV08: Northern Trust, which has so far played a marginal role in the Canadian market, has been named trustee and custodian for the Halifax Regional Municipality Master Trust, which includes two pension plans with combined assets of approximately CAD1bn. Northern Trust will provide custody and benefit payments.

25NOV08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Barnaby Nelson as head of business development for Asia. The first senior sales manager in the region, he is based in Hong Kong, reporting to Margaret Harwood-Jones globally and locally to Bruno Campenon as head of BNP Paribas Securities Services in Hong Kong. Nelson joins from Reuters, where he launched and led its Asian reference data business.

25NOV08: J.P. Morgan has expanded its transition management team. Mike Gardener, head of Bear Stearn’s transition management business in the US, has moved to London to head the firm’s EMEA transition management business. He reports to John Minderides, global head of the transition management business. In addition to Gardener, five new executives from Bear Stearns joined the team in New York, and Jody Windmiller joined the London-based EMEA team as a sales and client management executive. She joins from UBS's transition management business.

24NOV08: BNY Mellon Corporation is to reduce its worldwide workforce of 43,000 by approximately 4pct, or 1,800 positions. Robert Kelly, chairman and chief executive officer, said: “It has become clear that we need to take additional steps beyond our merger synergies to reduce expenses, given the current weakness in the global economy. We will take advantage of natural turnover to lessen the impact on existing staff.” BNY Mellon was one of the first beneficiaries of the U.S. Treasury’s support programme, which is investing USD3bn in the firm’s preferred stock and warrants.

24NOV08: GlobeOp Financial Services is strengthening its European-domiciled hedge fund administration services following the licensing of its Dublin office by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority. The office is led by Jim Casey, GlobeOp’s global head of investor relations.

The license allows GlobeOp to service Irish domiciled funds and support European hedge fund clients and their investors with full fund administration services. Services provided by GlobeOp’s Dublin office include fund accounting and reporting – including independent NAV reports – share registry and transfer agency, and investor communications.

24NOV08: HSBC Securities Services continues its longstanding policy of relocating managers to give them more global experience. The most recent move involves Anna Stepney, a performance analyst, who is relocating from HSBC’s London headquarters to Hong Kong.

She will focus on developing the firm’s global investment performance standards consultancy and verification, performance and attribution services in the region. She will also look after the existing client base. Stepney will report to Colin Kay, global head of performance consultancy for HSS. She joined HSS in 2000 and moved to the performance consultancy business in 2003.

24NOV08: Eagle Investment Systems LLC, the financial services technology subsidiary of BNY Mellon, has been selected by Prudential Corporation Asia’s asset management business to provide data management technology to manage its investment portfolios across 10 markets in Asia, including mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates.

“Eagle’s data management software solution demonstrated its ability to meet our requirements to improve our business’ operational efficiency and data quality further.  Its technology also allows us to centralise the business’ security reference data to support its pre-trade compliance process, as well as to meet the stringent compliance requirements across multiple Asia jurisdictions,” said Gordon Brown, regional head of IT for Prudential’s asset management business in Asia. Last year Prudential appointed HSBC as fund administrator across nine Asian markets.

24NOV08: BNY Mellon is launching an enhanced private equity servicing platform, combining new technology and outsourcing services to support the administrative needs of private equity investment companies. The newly-integrated services will support a broad range of private equity investments, including buyouts, venture capital, mezzanine financing, real estate, and hybrid hedge fund deals. BNY Mellon reports private equity assets under administration of USD7bn.

24NOV08: International Financial Data Services has appointed Stephen Ellis as chief operating officer of the firm’s Canadian operations, responsible for operations and client management. He will report to Debralee Goldberg, president and chief executive officer. Ellis was vice president of treasury and lending at the Credit Union of Central Ontario. IFDS is rebuilding its Canadian management team after the loss of several senior staff to Citi’s Canadian business.

24NOV08: Malcolm Pobjoy has joined PNC Global Investment Servicing as vice president and head of international sales in the US. In this role, he will be responsible for the sales of international services to US clients, as well as enhancing the profile of PNC’s international services within the US marketplace.

Pobjoy was head of sales and relationship management at BNP Paribas Securities Services in London, where he led the business development team focused on the asset management, asset owner and distributor market segments. He joined BNP Paribas in 2005 from Omgeo, where he was responsible for strategic business development in Europe.

24NOV08: BNY Mellon has been selected by Direxion Funds to provide exchange traded funds services including custody, accounting, fund administration, basket calculation and transfer agency. Direxion Funds, managed by Rafferty Asset Management, LLC, is a provider of leveraged index funds and ETFs and alternative-class fund products. Founded in 1997, the company has approximately USD1.6bn in assets under management.

24NOV08: Following J.P. Morgan’s acquisition of Nordea’s institutional global custody business earlier this year, two leading Norwegian institutional investors have completed the transition of their global custody business.

Gjensidige Forsikring, one of Norway’s largest non-life insurance companies, and Folketrygdfondet, an asset manager for the Government Pension Fund in Norway, are now global custody clients of J.P. Morgan Investor Services. Both are in discussions to extend the range of services they use. As a result of the Nordea acquisition, J.P. Morgan Europe Limited established four new branches in the region, located in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen.

24NOV08: GlobeOp Financial Services has appointed Tony Glickman as global head of risk services. Glickman will report to Vernon Barback, GlobeOp president and COO, and will be based in New York. He will also join GlobeOp's operating committee.

24NOV08: Euroclear and the International Capital Market Association have signed an agreement for Euroclear SA/NV to acquire 100pct of Xtrakter Ltd, the ICMA subsidiary, for an undisclosed cash amount.

Xtrakter owns TRAX, a trade matching system for fixed income, repo, equity and derivatives transactions, with more than 300 clients. Xtrakter also provides pricing data for approximately 12,000 international securities and internationally traded government bonds, as well as securities reference data for more than 150,000 government bonds, corporate bonds, medium-term notes and private derivative issues. Xtrakter employs 95 people and is based in London.

07NOV08: Following in the footsteps of SocGen, which announced plans in June for an Indian joint venture with State Bank of India, BNP Paribas has signed a joint venture agreement with Sundaram Business Services to provide securities services in India. The new joint venture, to be called Sundaram BNP Paribas Securities Services, will be 49pct owned by BNP Paribas and 51pct by SBS. It will be headquartered in Chennai.

06NOV08: BNP Paribas has become the latest bank to suffer from the financial crisis. In the third quarter, its securities services division reported losses of EUR127m after provisions of EUR155m.

04NOV08: Citi has been appointed by Fortelus Capital Management to provide hedge fund administration services to Fortelus’ distressed debt fund. Fortelus is a UK-based firm with over USD500m in assets under management. Citi will be providing fund accounting, administration and investor services through its offices in New Jersey and the Cayman Islands.

Andy Low, Fortelus operations manager, said: “We’re very excited to be working with a premier company in the hedge fund space. Citi is a firm with global presence and the expertise to meet the challenges of the daily accounting operations. I look forward to working with Citi as they have the right technology and people to provide the best service for our distressed debt fund.”

04NOV08: BNY Mellon has appointed John Gruber as head of global product management for its performance and risk analytics product line. Gruber replaces Debra Baker, who recently was named chief administrative officer for the bank’s global corporate trust division. He will be based in Boston and report to Dan Wywoda, head of global product management.

Gruber was co-founder and managing principal of Hamersley Partners, a third-party marketing and research firm. Prior to that, he worked for State Street Analytics as senior vice president in charge of global client service and consulting.

04NOV08: Euroclear’s acquisition of the Nordic Central Securities Depository (NCSD) and its subsidiaries, APK and VPC, the Finnish and Swedish CSDs, has become effective. All regulatory and other approvals for NCSD to join the Euroclear group have been obtained. APK will be renamed Euroclear Finland and VPC will become Euroclear Sweden. The migration of the Finnish and Swedish transaction-processing activities to Euroclear’s single platform is scheduled immediately after completion of the new platform, planned for 2011.

Kjell Arvidsson, currently chief executive officer of NCSD, will become chairman of both APK and VPC. Seppo Rantanen will continue in his current position as chief executive officer of APK. Anso Thiré, currently managing director and head of the global capital markets division at Euroclear SA/NV in Brussels, will relocate to Stockholm and become chief executive officer of VPC. Thiré will also have responsibility for the integration of both Nordic CSDs within the Euroclear group.

30OCT08: RBC Dexia has made four appointments to its Asia Pacific client team:

Jamie Spark has been appointed director, sales and relationship management in RBC Dexia’s Singapore office. He previously spent three years in the company’s Melbourne office.

Wesley Palmer has been appointed as director of business development in Melbourne. He joins from National Australia Bank, where he was business development manager.

Helena White Chan has joined as director of business development, with responsibility for Hong Kong and northern Asia. She spent more than 14 years with Reuters.

Janelle McCoy has been appointed director of relationship management in Australia. She previously managed large operational teams within the fund management client group.

30OCT08: Northern Trust has been selected to provide correspondent and domestic custody services for Broadway Bank, the largest independently-owned bank in San Antonio, Texas. Northern Trust will deliver trust accounting and investment management activities through the TrustPortal, a wealth management solution for financial institutions.

29OCT08: Farglory Life has selected BNY Mellon as its first global custodian. Established in 2000, Farglory Life is ranked 24th among the 1,000 top financial institutions in Taiwan with total assets in excess of USD3.3bn.

“Farglory Life selected BNY Mellon to service our global assets following an extensive review,” said Mr Chao Teng Hsiung, chairman of Farglory Life. “In the current economic environment we believe it was important to select a provider with the high credit ratings and strong balance sheet to ensure the safekeeping of our assets. BNY Mellon demonstrated their strength in all areas, including technology and superior client service.”

29OCT08: Northern Trust has adopted the FpML (financial product mark-up language) messaging format for processing OTC derivative trades. All its clients – asset managers and asset owners – can now use FpML for OTC trade capture, with the standard already in use for a high-profile investment manager client.

28OCT08: Having been omitted from the original list of nine banks, Northern Trust has now agreed to participate in the US Treasury’s voluntary capital purchase programme. The Treasury intends to invest USD1.5 billion in senior preferred stock and related warrants in Northern Trust Corporation. Northern reported a third-quarter loss of USD129.4m.

24OCT08: Barely a year after he joined J.P. Morgan from HSBC, Richard Hale has left his job as head of sales for asset managers and insurance companies in EMEA. Hale is to join RBC Dexia in January 2009 as head of sales and relationship management for the UK, Ireland and the Middle East. Hale will be reunited with Tony Johnson, RBC Dexia’s global head of sales and relationship management, with whom he worked at both Royal Bank of Canada and BISYS.

24OCT08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has launched NeoLink, its new client portal. NeoLink gives clients access to all reporting applications and online transactions related to custody, cash, transfer agent, fund administration, middle office, investment compliance and trustee services.

23OCT08: Northern Trust has reported a net loss of USD124.9m for the third quarter. The loss was primarily as a result of the bank’s previously announced USD561.5m charge related to its support for client cash funds.

23OCT08: Nicole Best has joined Brown Brothers Harriman as a senior vice president, working in the relationship management team. She will report to Julie Flynn. Best was chief compliance officer of Heartland Advisors and Heartland Funds, which are BBH clients.

22OCT08: KAS BANK continues to suffer from the credit crisis. In the third quarter, operating profits dropped by 20pct, although it has given no detailed figures. The bank said that it had experienced ‘strongly lower revenue’ from securities lending.

KAS will take a further impairment charge of EUR6-8m, having already announced losses of EUR15m. The bank says that it does not expect to make use of any measures that may be introduced by the Dutch authorities to strengthen the banking system, which have already included an EUR10bn capital injection into ING, which has an 8.3pct stake in KAS. KAS BANK reported EUR67m profit before tax in 2007.

21OCT08: In the four years since he left BNY, there have been numerous rumours about the future of Tom Perna. However, he has finally emerged, not in a senior capacity at a competitor custodian, but as CEO of Quadriserv, Inc., a small software house with plans to build a centralized securities lending platform in collaboration with the Options Clearing Corporation. Perna has been a CEO before: he ran Fidata, a processing services provider, before it was bought by BNY in 1986.

21OCT08: BNY Mellon has appointed three senior managers to strengthen its client management group in the Middle East and Africa.

Janet Johnstone joins the Dubai branch as chief administrative officer for Middle East and Africa. Johnstone will be responsible for overseeing all shared services within the region and building the infrastructure to support the management hub in Dubai. She has relocated to Dubai from Johannesburg, where she led BNY Mellon’s South Africa team for five years. Johnstone will continue to have overall responsibility for the company's clients in Southern Africa, with support out of the Johannesburg office by Karen Henwood.

Also based in Dubai, Hamed Abu-Zaher will cover Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain as client executive and country manager. Abu-Zaher transferred internally from Pershing where he worked for the past nine years developing relationships with broker-dealers in the Middle East and North Africa.

In Abu Dhabi, Rajai Ayyash takes on the role of client executive and country manager for the UAE, Oman and Kuwait, and manager of the Abu Dhabi representative office.

Earlier this year BNY Mellon established a regional management hub in Dubai to support its activities in the region, which cover offices in Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul and Johannesburg. The Dubai office received its branch license from the Dubai Financial Services Authority in April.

20OCT08: RBC Dexia has been selected by Optimum Asset Management Inc. to provide services including global custody, fund valuation and unitholder recordkeeping for the company's newly-launched family of pooled funds. Founded in 1985, Optimum Asset Management has over CAD2.3bn in assets under management, offers portfolio management services.

20OCT08: Conifer Securities, a small US fund administration shop, has struck a deal with J.P. Morgan to enable it to offer prime brokerage services. Conifer will work with J.P. Morgan’s broker dealer services business to offer hedge funds a full suite of prime brokerage services including financing, securities lending, custody and daily reporting.

Conifer’s move into the prime brokerage business is being managed by Dick Del Bello, who has more than 15 years of prime brokerage experience, including seven years as the head of prime brokerage for the Americas at UBS. With its headquarters in San Francisco and with offices in New York, Boston and the British Virgin Islands, Conifer has been in business since 1989.

17OCT08: BNY Mellon has reported higher securities processing revenue for the third quarter. Total fees rose to USD1,542m, up from USD1,460m in the same period last year, whilst FX and other trading revenues rose from USD238m to USD385m. The firm, which is one of the nine initial beneficiaries of the US Treasury’s TARP capitalisation, reported a steep drop in outstanding securities loans, down from USD663bn to USD470bn. BNY Mellon also announced a pre-tax write-down of USD162m on its investment portfolio.

17OCT08: RBC Dexia has opened an office in Malaysia. The office is one of five RBC Dexia operational hubs worldwide and will have 260 staff by the end of 2009, providing processing services for custody and fund administration, preliminary accounting work for net asset valuations, reconciliation for securities, cash and foreign exchange, and support for the firm’s global service model.

16OCT08: Despite the turmoil all around it, State Street has turned in a strong third-quarter operating performance. Operating revenue rose to USD2.5bn, up 12.4pct from last year’s third quarter. On an operating basis, State Street generated about 290bp of positive operating leverage. Trading services, which includes FX and brokerage, performed strongly, delivering revenue of USD363m, up 13pct, whilst securities finance revenue was up 49pct to USD246m.

However, it was not all good news. The firm has unrealised after-tax mark-to-market losses on its investment portfolio of USD3.3bn and in its asset-backed commercial paper conduits of USD2.1bn. It has also established a reserve of USD200m to cover its estimated net exposure on indemnification obligations relating to repurchase agreements linked to Lehman Brothers, and is considering whether it will need to take a USD400-450m pre-tax charge in the fourth quarter to cover support for under-performing accounts at SSgA.

Under the TARP agreement, the US Treasury is to buy USD2bn of preferred stock and warrants to purchase common stock with a total market price equal to about USD300m at the time of issuance.

16OCT08: HSBC Securities Services has reorganised its MENA management team.

Jayant Rikhye becomes head of HSBC Securities Services for Middle East and North Africa, responsible for all the bank’s HSS business lines. He was previously deputy global head of institutional fund services and head of institutional fund services, Asia Pacific, having joined HSBC in India in 1989.

Arindam Das becomes deputy head of HSBC Securities Services for Middle East and North Africa. Arindam also has specific responsibility for the custody business in the region.

Glyn Gibbs is head of MENA business development. He was previously working in HSBC global banking in London.

16OCT08: Northern Trust has appointed Steven Quigley to head process management for asset servicing in Europe, Middle East and Africa. He will be responsible for the support and continued development of the asset servicing operations and processes across EMEA. This includes overseeing activities such as operational process enhancements, innovation, system testing and business process change. Quigley joins from FTSE International.

16OCT08: BNY Mellon has completed the integration of its web-based information delivery platforms, giving clients the option of a single common portal from which to access account information as well as new features. The newly integrated Workbench portal, based on the legacy Mellon system, provides single sign-on access to all online applications for the asset servicing business.

16OCT08: Northern Trust has strengthened its corporate cash services with a new online capability. The bank has implemented the Clearwater Analytics system, which provides accounting, performance, compliance and risk reporting and is fully integrated with Northern Trust’s online data delivery platform, Passport.

15OCT08: Christmas has come early for BNY Mellon, which has been a major beneficiary of the US Treasury’s largesse. First, the Treasury will buy USD3bn of the bank’s preferred stock and warrants as part of its USD250bn bank recapitalisation programme. Secondly, the firm has been selected by the US Treasury to service the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program recently authorised under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The Treasury has hired the company to provide the accounting of record for the portfolio, hold all cash and assets in the portfolio, provide for pricing and asset valuation services and assist with other related services. BNY Mellon will also act as auction manager and conduct reverse auctions for the troubled assets. BNY Mellon is the seventh largest bank holding company in the US. It recently announced a USD425m after-tax charge related to cash funds and collateral reinvestment activities.

15OCT08: State Street, which has also been named as a beneficiary of the Treasury’s capital injection programme, has brought forward its third-quarter earnings announcement to today, at 0730 EST. Unlike BNY Mellon and Northern Trust, State Street has not recorded any charges against client cash funds or securities lending accounts.

13OCT08: BNY Mellon has promoted Eric Kamback to chief executive officer of its treasury services group. Previously deputy head of treasury services, Kamback assumes responsibility for the company's global payments, trade services and cash management businesses, succeeding Robert Stasik, who is retiring after 35 years of service. He will report to Karen Peetz, chief executive officer of issuer, treasury and broker-dealer services.

08OCT08: State Street has confirmed the appointment of Gunjan Kedia to a newly created role as an executive vice president in its US investment servicing business. Kedia will be responsible for the operational and financial aspects for several of State Street’s top mutual fund relationships. In addition, she will assist in setting the strategic direction of State Street’s mutual fund servicing business. She will report to Alan Greene, head of US investment servicing. Kedia joins from BNY Mellon, where she was in charge of global product management for the asset servicing business.

08OCT08: International Financial Data Services has appointed Richard Barrett as group executive, client administration. He is responsible for dealing, registration, administration control and distributor services functions, reporting to Jon Willis, operations director. He joins from Pershing, where he was head of product and client conversions.

03OCT08: Business as usual at BNY Mellon, which has picked up another major European mandate. The firm will provide Eureko B.V. with global custody and value added services for group assets valued at EUR38bn. Eureko is a privately-owned financial services group registered in the Netherlands that offers a range of insurance and related products. In addition to global custody, BNY Mellon will provide data warehousing, reporting, accounting, fund administration, asset pooling services and securities lending.

Rob Heerkens, director at Eureko Group Investments, said: “In making our decision we took into account BNY Mellon’s reputation in the market, its flexible systems, its solid understanding of the services in scope, and the excellent impression made by the team that will service our relationship on a day-by-day basis. BNY Mellon is a true global player that is fully committed to the asset servicing business, and as such is ideally placed to support Eureko in its market risk management.”

01OCT08: Philippe Collas, one of the architects of the success of Société Générale’s securities services business, appears to have fallen victim to the arrival of Michel Péretié from Bear Stearns in June. Péretié was appointed as head of SG’s corporate and investment banking businesses, replacing Jean-Pierre Mustier, who has been moved to take Collas’ job as head of global investment management and services (GIMS). Mustier will also be appointed as chairman and CEO of Société Générale Asset Management, replacing Alain Clot, whose new position within the group is yet to be announced. Mustier’s deputy will be Sylvie Rucar, COO of GIMS. In order to prevent potential conflicts of interest, the custody functions carried out by SG for the investment companies in the SGAM Group will be directly supervised by a deputy CEO of SG.

Collas, who has run GIMS since 2004, has been appointed as senior advisor to Frédéric Oudea, SG’s CEO. The appointments take effect today.

01OCT08: A Plus Finance has appointed BNP Paribas as depobank, transfer agent, registrar, custodian and fund administrator. Set up in 1998, A Plus Finance is a French asset management company specialising in private equity and the management of innovation mutual funds (FCPI) and local investment funds (FIP). It has EUR230m of assets under management through 15 funds.

30SEP08: Northern Trust has become the latest custodian to announce significant charges as a result of support actions for its cash investment vehicles and collateral reinvestment funds. The firm expects to incur pre-tax charges of approximately USD525m (USD328m after-tax or USD1.46 per share) in the third quarter in connection with these actions.

Northern Trust will increase the support provided for certain cash investment funds previously covered through capital support agreements and will add one additional fund to this coverage. The capital support levels will increase in aggregate by USD321m, to a maximum capital contribution of USD550m. Northern Trust expects to incur a pre-tax charge of approximately USD290m (USD181m after-tax or USD0.80 per share) in the third quarter as a result of this action.

Northern Trust also will take certain actions to provide support for securities lending clients whose cash collateral is invested in five constant US dollar, commingled investment pools which have been negatively impacted by recent market events. Northern Trust expects to incur a pre-tax charge of approximately USD150m (USD94m after-tax or USD0.42 per share) in the third quarter.

The firm also announced that it will offer to purchase certain illiquid auction rate securities that were purchased through Northern Trust for personal financial services (PFS) clients under investment discretion or that were acquired by PFS clients from Northern Trust's affiliated broker/dealer. Northern Trust expects to incur a pre-tax charge of approximately USD85m (USD53m after-tax or USD0.24 per share) in the third quarter.

30SEP08: KAS BANK, which has been looking for a new CFO since John van Scheijndel announced his intention to leave this month, has nominated Rolf Kooijman to fill the role. Subject to the approval of the Dutch Central Bank, Kooijman will take up the position at the beginning of 2009. He is currently director of group finance and control at Delta Lloyd Group in Amsterdam.

30SEP08: BNY Mellon has appointed Jaime Gil-Delgado Friginal as managing director and country manager for Iberia (Spain, Portugal and Andorra, based in Madrid. Gil-Delgado replaces Javier de Ussel, who is retiring from the company after 13 years. He was previously managing director for Iberia and Latin America for WestLB Mellon Asset Management and managing director for WMAM Luxembourg. Cesar Valcarcel continues as deputy managing director responsible for the relationships in this region and reporting into Gil-Delgado. BNY Mellon has had a representative office in Madrid since 1982.

29SEP08: BNY Mellon is to take a USD425m after-tax charge as a result of its decision to support clients invested in its money market mutual funds, cash sweep funds and similar collective funds impacted by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The bank will be issuing support agreements related to five commingled cash funds used primarily for overnight custody cash sweeps and one fund used for the reinvestment of cash collateral within the firm’s securities lending business.

29SEP08: One of the inevitable consequences of the financial crisis is an accelerated process of consolidation. Having seen KAS BANK announce losses on its holdings in Lehman, Fortis has now had to be rescued by the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, each of which will take a 49pct stake in the Fortis operations in their countries. Analysts have recently speculated that the firm will look to sell Fortis Prime Fund Solutions, the fund administration business.

29SEP08: Despite this, Fortis continues to move the deckchairs. Fortis Prime Fund Solutions has appointed Philip Craig as head of sales and relationship management for continental Europe. He will be based in Geneva. Craig was previously based in Dublin, responsible for sales and relationship management for PFS in Ireland.

29SEP08: A rare mandate for BNP Paribas, which has spent most of 2008 trying to defend client mandates rather than win new ones. Fidelity has chosen BNP Paribas as the sole custodian, depository bank and fund administrator for its new range of employee retirement savings plan funds in France.

29SEP08: Citi’s securities and fund services business has shaken up part of its global sales team. Richard Ernesti has been appointed as global head of investor client and sales management within its financial institutions team. He will report to Dirk Jones as global head of financial institutions client and sales management and will be part of the SFS executive management committee. Ernesti was most recently global head of account management within the prime brokerage operation and previously was head of international sales for SFS.

Gail Tomao has been appointed as North America financial institutions client and sales management head. She will report directly to Julie Monaco in North America and Dirk Jones globally. In EMEA, Sikko Vankatwijk, Patric Foley-Brickley and Richard Hyam will report both globally to Ernesti and regionally to Dirk Jones. In Asia, Haarle Mossman will be the senior investor client and sales manager.

19SEP08: The banking crisis is starting to have an effect on the custody industry. Whilst both State Street and BNY Mellon have felt the need to issue statements regarding their exposure to Lehman Brothers and others, KAS BANK has announced that it expects to record a EUR8-10m loss. It is holding a bond portfolio with a gross value of EUR8m, and has claims on Lehman Brothers with a gross value of EUR12m from the liquidation of the securities lending portfolio.

19SEP08: RBC Dexia has appointed Padraig Kenny as managing director, Ireland. He joins from Private Wealth Managers Ltd. in Ireland, where he was investment director at. Prior to that, he was with Pioneer Investments for over 10 years, where he held various positions, including chief operating officer.

19SEP08: Dubai Financial Market and Deutsche Bank have signed a depository participant agreement which will enable Deutsche Bank to provide custody of DFM-listed securities to institutional and international clients.

19SEP08: Erste Group Bank has appointed Citi to provide integrated electronic execution and custody for the US. The platform will provide Erste Group Bank with an end-to-end service of global equity market executions, algorithms, DMA, trade routeing, processing and aggregation, global and domestic markets clearing, settlement, asset servicing, regulatory and position reporting, statements/billing and client support.

19SEP08: International Financial Data Services Ireland Limited has acquired a substantial minority interest in Percana Group Limited. Percana is an Irish controlled company which provides software, outsourcing and consultancy services to the global life and pensions industry. William Slattery, managing director of State Street Ireland, and Pat Concannon, chief financial officer for IFDS Ireland, will both join the board of Percana Group.

16SEP08: Société Générale Securities Services has appointed Jörg Debé as relationship management director in Germany. He will be responsible for handling relations with institutional clients and will report locally to Jürgen Scharfenorth, CEO of SGSS KAG mbH, and to Bruno Lataste, head of SGSS global relationship management in Paris. Debé was responsible for institutional and fund administration for BNP Paribas Securities Services in Frankfurt.

15SEP08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Alan Cameron as the new head of clearing, settlement and custody client solutions. He will be based in London and will report to Charles Cock, global head of coverage and client solutions. Cameron joins from Citi where he spent nearly 20 years and was most recently director of business development for direct clearing and custody.

15SEP08: GlobeOp, the specialist administration provider, has appointed Jon Anderson as global head of OTC derivatives. Anderson will report to Vernon Barback, GlobeOp president and COO, and will be based in the company's Manhattan headquarters. He will join GlobeOp's operating committee.

Anderson most recently served as a managing director and head of trading technologies at BlueMountain Capital Management, a private investment company based in New York. At BlueMountain he also served as head of investment management support, building out the firm's risk and profit analytics, collateral management and operations functions. Established in 2000, GlobeOp has approximately 160 clients worldwide, with USD104bn in assets under administration.

15SEP08: SEI has been selected by Nicholas Investment Partners to provide investment operations support. Under the agreement, SEI will provide Nicholas Investment Partners with services including portfolio accounting, performance measurement, reporting, business continuity and disaster recovery.

Nicholas Investment Partners is an independent, majority woman-owned investment boutique specialising in active equity and alternative strategies including small, micro and mid cap as well as long/short equity and convertible arbitrage. The firm was formed by Nicholas-Applegate founder Art Nicholas and former global chief investment officer Catherine Nicholas.

15SEP08: Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and Deutsche Bank have signed an agreement for Deutsche Bank to provide custody of ADX-listed shares to institutional investor clients. ADX has also signed custody agreements with HSBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Standard Chartered Bank.

10SEP08: Gunjan Kedia, global head of asset servicing product management for BNY Mellon, has left the firm. Kedia joined Mellon from McKinsey in 2004 as head of operations strategy and was promoted in 2006 to run North American investment manager services, which included outsourcing. Following the merger, she was appointed as head of global product management for the asset servicing business. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Kedia is moving to State Street to take up a senior role in the mutual fund business.

Kedia is replaced by Dan Wywoda, who will continue to be based in Boston and will report to Tim Keaney, co-CEO of BNY Mellon Asset Servicing. Since the merger, Wywoda, who began his career at Mellon in 1981, has led the core products group, covering global custody, cash and foreign exchange, portfolio accounting and client information delivery platforms. Wywoda will also assume responsibility for financial institutions and international markets product management, the performance and risk analytics product management and product strategy and planning group.

10SEP08: The Foreign Investment Promotion Board has given its approval to Société Générale’s proposed custody services joint venture in India with State Bank of India.

05SEP08: With the integration of BISYS largely completed, Citi has started the task of adding fresh talent to its hedge fund services business. Michael Coyne joins as vice president of business development, and Bob Sisti comes in as head of operations for the Roseland, NJ and Cayman Island hedge fund offices.

Coyne, who will report to Bob Donahoe, a managing director of Citi's hedge fund services business, has previously worked at Deloitte & Touche LLP, Van Kampen Investments Inc. and Man Investments, Inc. He will be responsible for growth of Citi’s hedge fund business in the Midwest region.

Sisti will report to Gary Tenkman, another managing director of the hedge fund services group. He was most recently COO of BNY Mellon's alternative investor services business. He will be responsible for client services, portfolio accounting, tax and investor services in both the Roseland, NJ and Cayman locations.

05SEP08: The Bank of New York Mellon has named Robert Rupp as an executive vice president and head of enterprise-wide market risk. Rupp will be a member of the company's global operating committee and will report to Brian Rogan, chief risk officer. Rupp had been with JPMorgan Chase since 2000, most recently as managing director of risk management. In this capacity, he provided market risk oversight for the chief investment office, chase home finance, corporate treasury and asset management.

03SEP08: Société Générale Securities Services has opened a new office in Hong Kong to offer transfer agency and registration services. André Durand, previously head of operations at SGSS fund distribution services in Luxembourg, has been appointed general manager of SGSS Hong Kong Trust Company Ltd. He reports to Pascal Bérichel, head of SGSS fund distribution services.

03SEP08: RBC Dexia has made two additions to its European sales team. Both Nick Emmins and Conor Hoey join as directors, sales and relationship management, in RBC Dexia's London office. Emmins comes in from BNP Paribas where he was head of business development - UK retail. Hoey was previously with Capita Group as business development director.

03SEP08: J.P. Morgan may be prevaricating about how to deal with Bear Stearns’ prime brokerage business, but it has at least made one early decision. Measurisk is to become an integral part of the firm’s alternative investment services business. Measurisk provides institutional investors and asset managers with risk transparency and risk measurement solutions, including value-at-risk, stress testing and position-based analytics, for multi-manager, multi-asset class global portfolios. More then 1,000 hedge funds, representing over USD650bn in assets, provide monthly data to Measurisk, making it the leader in hedge fund risk solutions.

03SEP08: HSBC Securities Services is to provide alternative fund services in Australia, offering local fund accounting, investor servicing and financial reporting to hedge fund managers, fund of hedge fund managers, absolute return fund managers and private equity partners. The alternative fund services division will be run by Howard Yip, head of alternative fund services, reporting to Lilian Wong, Asia Pacific head of fund services.

28AUG08: Further proof that asset managers with outsourcing agreements do not stay faithful to their partners. Investec Asset Management, which signed an outsourcing deal with State Street in 2004, has appointed RBC Dexia to provide transfer agency for the firm's GBP3.5bn Investec Global Strategy Fund, based in Luxembourg.

“We undertook a comprehensive selection process to identify the ideal shareholder services provider,” said Kim McFarland, COO for Investec Asset Management. “We were particularly impressed by the geographic scope of RBC Dexia's operations, which is important to us, given our international client base and planned expansion into Europe. In addition, the scalability of RBC Dexia's shareholder services solution and high levels of straight-through processing demonstrate a proven commitment to meeting their clients' needs. We are confident they will bring this same level of dedication to our newly-formed working relationship.”

28AUG08: State Street has opened a new office in Doha, Qatar. The office will provide investment servicing solutions as well as investment research via State Street Associates, the company’s research partnership. Rod Ringrow, senior vice president of State Street, will become the location’s managing director.

28AUG08: Northern Trust has launched an enhanced version of its fixed income performance attribution analytical tool. The enhanced service uses multiple sources and types of fixed income characteristic data to customise attribution analysis for fixed income investments.

27AUG08: After a very late entry into the market, State Street has announced that private equity assets under administration have surpassed USD100bn. State Street’s fund services team provides administration services to more than 100 private equity and venture capital investment sponsors and fund of fund managers, who manage more than 350 funds globally. During 2008, State Street has added USD14bn in private equity assets, representing 27 new funds and eight new client relationships.

27AUG08: Citisoft Plc, the specialist investment consultant, has appointed Ian Mainwaring as the new practice head focusing on hedge funds and alternative products. Citisoft’s alternative investments practice will help asset managers solve operational issues around derivatives and alternative investment products and services to hedge funds. Prior to joining Citisoft, Mainwaring was head of technology for electronic trading and hedge accounting at Rabobank International.

26AUG08: RBC Dexia has been selected by Vontobel Asset Management to provide custody, fund administration, transfer agency and recordkeeping for the company's EUR11bn portfolio of Luxembourg-based funds. Transition of the funds has already taken place. Vontobel Asset Management is part of Bank Vontobel AG, the Swiss private bank.

“We undertook a comprehensive review to identify the best investor services provider for our Luxembourg funds business. Ultimately, we determined that RBC Dexia is the provider best-aligned with our long-term business strategy," said Dominic Gaillard, head of asset management services for Vontobel Asset Management. "We were impressed not only by RBC Dexia's professionalism and expertise, but also by their determination to provide full support for a successful migration and to develop a tailored, automated solution to meet our specific needs.”

26AUG08: HSBC Securities Services has appointed Ritesh Singh as head of regulatory and industry affairs for the fund services business in Asia Pacific. Singh has relocated from India to Hong Kong and reports to Bill Scrimgeour, global head of regulatory and industry affairs, fund services. Singh was previously head of HSBC’s institutional fund services business in India.

22AUG08: State Street has launched its OTC derivatives servicing platform, the OTC Hub. The hub is a global, end-to-end servicing solution that automates a number of stages in derivatives processing, including customer reporting, electronic trade flow and the reconciliation of positions and cash flows between the middle and back offices. The platform will reconcile data from industry utilities and dealers to customer trade details and automates acquisition of vendor prices.

Already beta-tested, the OTC Hub is now live with PIMCO, the US-based global asset manager and long-time State Street client. “This cutting-edge technology provides an excellent opportunity to automate what has been a manually driven and complex part of our investment servicing operations,” said Richard Tyson, executive vice president of PIMCO. “Throughout our long partnership, State Street has consistently delivered advanced technological solutions for the challenges that come with a changing marketplace.”

22AUG08: Northern Trust has hired Martin Korst as senior relationship manager for The Netherlands. He joins from The Kyte Group in London, where he was responsible for business development and sales. He has also previously worked at Fortis Bank in various relationship management and sales roles.

21AUG08: Following Stan Shelton’s retirement in May, State Street has announced his replacement, although the title has changed. David Puth has been named as head of State Street’s investment research, securities finance and trading activities worldwide. Puth, 51, will report to Jay Hooley, president and chief operating officer. He will join the firm’s operating group, State Street’s most senior strategy and policy-making team.

Puth has more than two decades of experience managing and leading capital markets and trading businesses within global financial firms in Europe and the United States, including Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Chemical Bank. At JPMorgan Chase, Puth was a member of the firm’s executive committee and the investment bank’s management committee and was head of global currency and commodities, sales, trading and research. At Chemical Bank, Puth developed and managed the bank’s proprietary investments in a portfolio of hedge funds which later became part of JPMorgan Capital Partners. After leaving JPMorgan at the end of 2006, Puth founded the Eriska Group, an investment advisory and risk management consulting firm. Throughout his career he has served on a number of boards including iCap, a UK brokerage firm, and the Federal Reserve Foreign Exchange Committee, which he chaired from 2001 to 2003.

21AUG08: Eventually there will be no journalists left, as they all take the custodians’ silver (think of Andrew Capon and Tim Steele). Jason Conway is the latest defector to the dark side, having stepped down as the long-serving editor of ICFA magazine to join RBC Dexia in London. He will be senior manager for communications, responsible for providing marketing communication and content support for projects associated with collateral, advertising, PR and events. He will also be involved in creating “intellectual capital pieces with subject matter experts for external publication”.

20AUG08: BNY Mellon has been selected by Gulf Reinsurance Limited to provide global custody, cash sweep fund and securities lending services. Gulf Reinsurance is a new specialist reinsurer licensed by the Dubai Financial Services Authority and based in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The company has been established as a 50/50 joint venture by Gulf Investment Corporation, a financial institution owned by the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states, and Arch Reinsurance Ltd., a Bermuda-based insurance and reinsurance company.

15AUG08: Another contender for the most over-hyped mandate of the year. BNY Mellon has won a small mandate in Croatia, providing global custody to Privredna Banka Zagreb (PBZ), Croatia’s second largest bank and a member of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, for assets valued at around USD200m.

Run of the mill? Not according to Nadine Chakar, whose PR team went into overdrive to come up with following. “The CEE (central and eastern Europe) is one of Europe’s fastest-growing and most profitable banking regions and looks set to continue on this trajectory for some time,” said Chakar, head of EMEA for BNY Mellon’s asset servicing business. “This presents tremendous opportunities for global custodians, like BNY Mellon, who are able to provide the scale and intellectual capital to regional leaders, like PBZ, seeking business partners to enable them to accelerate growth and extend their global reach. Working with a regional leader like PBZ is an exciting mandate for us and bodes much promise for our mutual growth potential.”

13AUG08: It may be a relatively small mandate, but Northern Trust has made a major breakthrough in the UK fund services market. The bank been selected to provide fund accounting, trade execution and custody services for the recently launched Legal & General multi manager unit trust range, with assets totalling approximately GBP380m (USD722m). L&G is one of the UK’s largest institutional investors and has historically retained a very select panel of preferred custodians.

13AUG08: BNY Mellon has introduced a new service for investment managers and financial institutions that comply with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) in their reporting process. GIPS are a set of voluntary, industry-wide guidelines for investment firms outlining how to calculate and report investment results to prospective clients.

Based on a solution developed by its subsidiary Eagle Investment Systems, BNY Mellon's new hosted composite management service enables clients to create, maintain and validate their composite performance on a monthly basis. Results are reported in a customisable format accessed through the company's Workbench platform.

Composites are a collection of funds with similar investment mandates. Each discretionary fee-paying fund must be allocated to at least one composite. The funds within a composite are then aggregated, providing a composite return to form a track record, and thus creating the historical performance that investors use to evaluate an investment manager.

12AUG08: Following Andrew Gelb’s move to London as the new head of the securities and fund services business in EMEA, Citi has appointed Lee Waite as his replacement. Waite becomes global head of intermediary services, which covers clearing and sub-custody products. Waite was previously in charge of BISYS integration, which will now be managed by Rod Hardamon. Waite joined Citi in 1983 and has extensive capital markets experience, having come to SFS from the investment bank.

08AUG08: Northern Trust has hired Carl Lingenfelter, a former pension trustee for the Chicago Transit Authority, as strategy manager for the corporate and institutional services division.

At the Chicago Transit Authority, where he was chief of staff as well as a trustee, Lingenfelter led a targeted expansion into hedge funds and private equity. Lingenfelter was previously staff director of the Illinois Office of Management and Budget, a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and Kissinger McLarty Associates, as well as serving as an international economic policy advisor in the Clinton administration.

08AUG08: Gert Rautenberg has joined Brown Brothers Harriman as a managing director responsible for the firm's transfer agency product, which supports globally distributed fund ranges that are domiciled in Luxembourg, Ireland, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. Prior to joining BBH in Luxembourg, Rautenberg was head of transfer agency and shareholder services for Société Générale Securities Services. Rautenberg was one of the founders and chief executive of European Fund Services, which was established in 2000 in Luxembourg as an outsourcing and service platform for the European investment fund industry and was subsequently acquired by Société Générale in 2006.

07AUG08: Having picked up the USD50bn Pearl Group mandate at the beginning of this year, State Street has won another major UK insurance mandate. Sun Life Financial of Canada (UK) has appointed the firm to provide a range of investment administration services for more than USD15bn in assets. State Street will provide Sun Life’s UK operation with fund accounting and unit pricing, regulatory reporting, global custody, compliance monitoring, performance measurement, derivatives pricing and processing, and collateral management services.

“State Street’s broad range of services customised for the insurance market was a key attribute for us in our selection of a service provider,” said Janet Fuller, chief executive officer of Sun Life Financial of Canada (UK). “We also have been impressed by the quality of its customer service teams and control environment, and look forward to building a long-term partnership.”

Outgoing providers are believed to be RBC Dexia (custody), and Credit Suisse Asset Management (administration services).

07AUG08: BNY Mellon has been appointed to provide global custody and related services to the Co-operative Group Pension (Average Career Earnings) Scheme (PACE), which holds assets valued at GBP5.3bn.

Following PACE’s decision to consolidate the servicing of its pension scheme, BNY Mellon will now provide global custody, investment accounting, compliance monitoring, performance measurement, securities lending and commission recapture. The firm’s relationship with the Co-op goes back more than 10 years.

Mike Thorpe, finance and risk controller at the Co-operative Group, said: “We were looking for a single provider who was forward thinking and was willing to offer services that would enable the group to maximise our own efficiencies while providing us with the widest possible product set. We were very impressed with the knowledge and enthusiasm displayed by the BNY Mellon team, as well as the flexibility and capability of its Workbench client reporting technology.”

07AUG08: JPMorgan Private Equity Fund Services has established a presence in Jersey in the Channel Islands to service offshore clients. The Jersey operation will provide fund administration for private equity, real estate and infrastructure firms, as well as alternative investment portfolio administration for institutional limited partners.

06AUG08: Fulcrum Group, the Bermuda-based alternative asset management administrator which is owned by 3i, a private equity firm, and Butterfield Fund Services, a top-twenty provider of administration services for investment and pension funds and part of The Bank of N. T. Butterfield & Son Limited, have agreed to merge the two businesses to create Butterfield Fulcrum Group (BFG).

Headquartered in Bermuda, BFG will have approximately 400 employees in 10 locations across 9 countries. The firm will have close to USD100bn in assets under administration from nearly 1,000 hedge funds, fund of funds, private equity and institutional investment management clients. BFG is expected to rank amongst the top 10 independent alternative asset fund administration companies in the world. Butterfield will retain a substantial equity stake and 3i will own a majority interest in BFG.

Akshaya Bhargava will become CEO of BFG and Jill Considine, current chairman of the Fulcrum Group, will be the chairman of the BFG board. Alan Thompson, president and CEO of Butterfield, and Graham Brooks, executive vice president, international at Butterfield, will also join the BFG board, along with other representatives from Fulcrum and 3i.

06AUG08: International Financial Data Services is to provide Norwich Union Investment Funds with a range of full service administration and call centre functions for the Norwich Union collective investments business.

As a result of the agreement, all Norwich Union’s collective investment administration, customer and intermediary call centre functions will be transferred to IFDS at a date to be finalised in 2009. At that point the Norwich Union business will migrate onto IFDS’ FAST administration platform.

Separately, IFDS has signed a contract extension with M&G, the UK and European fund management business of the retail financial services group Prudential plc. M&G, which will extend the contract to 2016, intends to transfer its customer contact functions to IFDS, subject to employee consultation. M&G has over GBP150bn of funds under management.

06AUG08: Northern Trust has launched a FAS 157 Toolkit, combining automated processing, detailed reporting and industry expertise to support institutional clients as they adapt to a new US accounting standard related to fair value measurements and disclosures. The toolkit includes a broad range of resources to assist clients in implementing the reporting requirements of FAS 157, Fair Value Measurements, which defines fair value, establishes a framework for measuring fair value and expands disclosures about fair value measurements.

06AUG08: SEI has been selected by Frost Investment Advisors as fund operations outsourcing provider for its USD1.7bn mutual fund portfolio. Frost is a registered investment advisor in the US and is a subsidiary of Cullen/Frost Bankers, a financial services company based in Texas.

05AUG08: Phil Ludgate has joined RBC Dexia Investor Services in London as head of product management for securities services. Ludgate, who joins from Capita Financial Group, previously held similar positions at JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley Trust Co.

05AUG08: BNY Mellon can now offer automated trade capture of OTC derivatives through the SWIFT network using the Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) standard. BNY Mellon processes more than 60,000 OTC transactions per month. BNY Mellon has been testing the FpML link with several investment managers over the last six months.

04AUG08: Northern Trust has hired three managers in its product management and operations groups to support its global fund services business in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

John Hannon has been appointed as EMEA head of investment operations outsourcing. Hannon joins from State Street where he was head of investment operations. Before State Street, he was head of investment operations at AXA Investment Managers UK.

Andrew Lelliott joins as head of UK transfer agency. He joins from International Financial Data Services where he was the group executive responsible for all UK dealing and box management, and had responsibility for distributor services and agent services.

Sascha Calisan has joined as product manager for fund administration in EMEA. She was at RBC Dexia where she held a variety of roles focused on product, market and segment strategy. Most recently she was senior product manager, fund administration, for Europe and Asia.

01AUG08: State Street has been appointed by Lazard Asset Management to provide investment manager operations outsourcing services. State Street will provide Lazard with a range of services including trade settlement, portfolio administration, reconciliation, performance composite management, data management and preparation of client reports to support the majority of Lazard’s USD134.1bn in assets. As a result of this mandate, approximately 70 Lazard employees are expected to transfer to State Street.

01AUG08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by APG Investments to provide derivative and complex products solutions for the managed Global Tactical Asset Allocation portfolios, valued initially at EUR3bn.

“We have partnered BNY Mellon for traditional investments and global custody services for a number of years and have always been impressed with their high quality service and flexible approach to our partnership,” said Ruud Gilissen, director of investment and information services for APG Investments. “Their intuitive understanding of our business and ability to share knowledge in the accounting and valuation of more complex OTC derivatives, along with the expertise and enthusiasm of the BNY Mellon team, made them the natural choice when it came to selecting them as our partner in this venture.”

01AUG08: BNP Paribas has appointed Julien Cuminet as head of global transfer agency and retail, reporting to Philippe Ricard. Cuminet joins from Orga Consultants, where he was associate director, consulting on investment and retail banking practices. He will be responsible for the coordination of the firm’s TA operations across all locations, covering 700 staff on four continents.

01AUG08: Citi has launched a new service that will allow clients to continue to access markets on a direct basis but benefit by the consolidation of securities and cash accounts. The pan-European solution was developed in anticipation of the changes that will occur as a result of continued consolidation of the European market. Initially focused on the Euronext markets, the offering is now live in Belgium, France and Netherlands, with Portugal planned for early in 2009.

Citi’s solution will consolidate direct securities services for European markets into a single legal vehicle and technical platform, giving clients the choice when securities and cash accounts for different markets are to be merged into single accounts.  By utilizing a single point of access, contracting with a single legal vehicle, maintaining a single securities account and a single cash account per currency, clients will be able to directly access multiple markets across Europe.

01AUG08: HSBC has been chosen to provide full custody and fund administration services for Global MENA Financial Assets Ltd, a private equity company managed by Global Capital Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait’s Global Investment House. The mandate covers USD500m of investments and will be administered from HSBC's Guernsey operation.

01AUG08: BNY Mellon has been selected as overseas custodian by Bangkok Bank. Bangkok Bank is the largest bank in Thailand, with over 700 branches across the country. BNY Mellon will provide a range of administration services to Bangkok Bank to create a single-source global custody solution. Bangkok Bank will act as the local trustee to its underlying Thai institutional clients investing overseas.

01AUG08: Société Générale has launched its global performance benchmarking programme, a web reporting tool that enables SG clients to monitor the performance of their agency securities lending arrangements. The programme offers clients market analysis and securities lending performance analysis, utilisation rate and revenue reports. The programme provides a securities lending benchmark tool, powered by Data Explorers, the specialist securities lending data provider, as well as linkages with SG’s securities lending trading and cash reinvestment desks.

01AUG08: The Bank of New York Mellon has appointed Michel Sidier as head of the company’s Istanbul office. In this new position, Sidier will lead the development and implementation of the company's business strategy for Turkey, Israel and Azerbaijan. He will report to Hani Kablawi, MEA managing director. Sidier joined BNY Mellon’s Paris office in 2001 as country manager for France.

01AUG08: Northern Trust has appointed Matt Severs to a newly created position as head of consultant relations for its corporate and institutional services business in North America. He will report to Robert Frazer, head of global consultant relations. Severs moves from Northern Trust’s fund administration business.

01AUG08: Citi today has expanded its proprietary managed accounts connectivity hub, CitiConnect for Separately Managed Accounts. Designed to be used by investment managers, CitiConnect will enable best execution of SMA products by allowing users to send trades on all their SMA accounts from one unified order management system. CitiConnect for SMAs has over 400 different live connections to sponsor, custodian and industry utilities that support managed accounts.

18JUL08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Geoff Pullen to a business development role for alternative funds. He reports to Maria Cantillon, global practice leader, alternative funds. He was most recently European head of prime brokerage consultancy at Bear Stearns. BNP Paribas claims to have alternative assets in excess of USD120bn under administration.

16JUL08: Tom Zeeb has been appointed as head of the securities services division at Swiss Financial Market Services, the business formed earlier this year through the merger of SWX, SIS and Telekurs. Zeeb will oversee securities clearing and settlement, including SIS.

Zeeb, who joins on October 1, has been at Clearstream for the last four years, latterly as executive director of client relations. Prior to this, he worked for The Bank of New York in London. He is to be replaced by Phil Brown, who has been running Clearstream’s London office.

16JUL08: Brown Brothers Harriman has added four senior managers to its global securities lending team.

Jeffrey O’Neill joins as a senior vice president and head of global trading. O’Neill joins BBH from hedge fund K Capital Partners, where he was head of trading and securities finance.

 

Thomas Poppey is senior vice president and head of relationship management for the Americas. Poppey has 15 years of experience at State Street where he was a managing director responsible for over 200 North American institutional securities lending client relationships.

 

Andrew Pettit comes in as a senior vice president and head of global business development. Pettit was most recently head of securities lending business development for Deutsche Bank’s global prime finance division.

 

Daniel McGuiggin joins BBH from State Street as a vice president and head of US trading. McGuiggin was head of State Street’s Boston international lending desk.

16JUL08: BNP Paribas has hired Joseph Laclautre as a product specialist for the bank’s integrated execution and securities services solution (IESS). He will be responsible for IESS development and sales, reporting to Chantal Peyre de Febregues, head of product.

16JUL08: BNY Mellon has launched a 130/30 large capitalisation peer group universe through its performance and risk analytics product line. The new universe allows institutional investors to compare managers overseeing 130/30 strategies and to compare the 130/30 large cap universe's performance against a traditional long-only universe. BNY Mellon has also enhanced its equity profile report to allow clients to view their long, short and total portfolio exposures and fundamental make-up, offering greater clarity on portfolio structure.

15JUL08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by Innovest Kapitalanlagegesellschaft AG as global custodian for its full global fund range, including 76 different funds and sub-funds. Innovest’s global portfolio has assets exceeding USD4.4bn, covering 58 different markets. In addition to global custody, BNY Mellon will be providing cash management and foreign exchange support services.

A subsidiary of Siemens Financial Services, Innovest is amongst Austria's largest funds-of-funds managers for institutional investors, with over USD10bn in assets under management.

15JUL08: Northern Trust has been selected to provide fund administration services to BH Global Limited, a newly established feeder fund investing exclusively in the Brevan Howard Global Opportunities Master Fund Limited, a hedge fund which began trading on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year. BH Global is a Guernsey-incorporated closed ended investment company with USD1bn in assets. This latest win follows Northern Trust’s appointment by the Guernsey-domiciled BH Macro Limited fund in 2007.

15JUL08: PFPC has been renamed PNC Global Investment Servicing. In Europe, PFPC International Limited will now operate as PNC Global Investment Servicing (Europe) Limited and PFPC Bank Limited as PNC International Bank Limited. ADVISORport, Albridge Solutions, Inc. and Coates Analytics, LP will retain their brands as PNC companies. In addition, PFPC Distributors, Inc. and PFPC Trust Company will continue doing business under their current names. PNC GIS administers USD2.6trn in assets.

14JUL08: Euroclear is making some senior management changes with effect from September 1.

Tim May, currently chief executive officer of Euroclear UK & Ireland (EUI), will become chairman of EUI, while retaining his current roles as executive director of Euroclear SA/NV at group level and chairman of EMXCo. May will replace Pierre Francotte as EUI Chairman. Yannic Weber, currently managing director and head of the commercial division at Euroclear SA/NV, will become chief executive officer of EUI.

Pierre Yves Goemans, currently managing director and head of product management at Euroclear SA/NV, will replace Yannic Weber as head of the commercial division. Jo Van de Velde, currently director and head of transaction processing operations for Euroclear Bank, will replace Goemans as head of the product management division and will be promoted to managing director and a member of the group management team.

Thierry Faut is to join Euroclear SA/NV from A.T. Kearney as managing director and head of the corporate strategy and public affairs division and a member of the group management team.

14JUL08: The cantonal banks of Lucerne, St Gallen and Thurgau are to outsource their securities data management in connection with their migration to the Avaloq banking platform. This is reportedly a first in Switzerland, as banks have previously kept these functions in-house. The service is being provided and managed by Swiss independent business service providers Fin-Log AG and Comit AG.

14JUL08: Northern Trust has appointed Florence Chua as head of operations for its Singapore office. The position is new and supports the company’s continued plans for growth in the region. Chua joins from Citi, where she has worked in various regional functions in securities and fund services over the past 11 years.

10JUL08: RBC Dexia Investor Services has signed a letter of intent with AEGON Canada to provide investment accounting services for AEGON’s portfolio of 160 funds, worth CAD8.5bn. AEGON Canada Inc. provides Canadians with life insurance and investment products through its operating subsidiaries Transamerica Life Canada, AEGON Fund Management and AEGON Capital Management.

The deal represents an expansion of a longstanding working relationship. As part of the transaction, AEGON Canada's investment accounting employees will transfer to RBC Dexia's operation in Toronto. Transition is expected to begin in mid-August and be completed by the end of October 2008.

“Based on our positive working relationship with RBC Dexia, we are confident that our clients and employees will benefit from RBC Dexia's global operating model and strong focus on client service excellence," said Paul Reaburn, president and CEO of AEGON Canada. "The outsourcing of investment accounting supports AEGON Canada's strategy of focusing on our core business, which is the manufacturing of life insurance and investment products.”

09JUL08: Citi has announced three further clients for its OpenPrime service, an operating platform for hedge funds and long-short funds:

CMTF Asset Management Ltd, a Hong Kong-based joint venture between China Merchants Securities and Tai Fook Asset Management, which has recently launched an equity long/short fund focusing on the Greater China region;

Galaxy Asset Management (HK) Ltd, which is using OpenPrime as the operating platform for its recently launched Galaxy China Deep Value Fund; and

Montana Board of Investments, the manager of the public pension funds for the state of Montana, which is using OpenPrime to help manage its investments in 130/30 strategies.

OpenPrime, which has attracted more than 20 clients worldwide during its first two years of operation, is a portfolio and order management system that is prime broker-neutral.

09JUL08: Fulcrum Group, the Bermuda-based global alternative investment administrator, has appointed Jill Considine as chairman of the board of directors. Considine was chairman and CEO of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) from 1999 to 2006.

09JUL08: KAS BANK has become a General Clearing Member for the Austrian market, which will enable both local brokers and remote members to settle exchange trades through KAS BANK’s European clearing and settlement platform. KAS BANK now offers its clients a direct link to seventeen European markets, Hong Kong, Dubai and the USA.

08JUL08: CIBC Mellon has been appointed by the City of Surrey, British Columbia’s second largest city, to provide asset servicing and accounting support for its investment book of business.

08JUL08: Northern Trust has hired Maarten Roeleveld as sales manager for the Netherlands, responsible for selling the firm’s asset servicing capabilities into the Dutch institutional investor market. Roeleveld is based in Amsterdam, filling the position previously held by Eric Pouwels, who was promoted to managing director of Northern Trust’s Amsterdam office in April. Roeleveld joins from Ordina Business Process Outsourcing B.V., where he was a business development manager for three years.

04JUL08: Northern Trust has been selected by New York-based fund manager, Auda Hedge LLC, to provide fund administration, custody, banking and foreign exchange services to its fund of hedge fund programme, with assets in excess of USD1bn.

“Northern Trust is able to offer us everything we need under one roof and, in addition, we are particularly excited about the prospect of having daily portfolio management data for our funds-of-hedge-funds for the first time. Both were important reasons that lead to Northern Trust’s selection,” said Robert Kirby, COO of Auda.

04JUL08: Fortis Prime Fund Solutions has hired Claude Noesen as a director for its Luxembourg sales and client relationship team. He joins the firm from HSBC in Luxembourg, where he headed the business development department, focusing on building the alternative client base. Fortis Prime Fund Solutions has assets under administration and custody in Luxembourg of around EUR100bn.

03JUL08: JPMorgan has signed a multinational pooling agreement with Shell Asset Management Company (SAMCo), the asset management arm of Royal Dutch Shell. The deal aims to service Shell corporate pension and insurance plans with total assets in excess of USD70bn, and includes fund accounting, fund administration and securities lending services.

Acknowledging the complexity of the pooling arrangement – believed to be JPMorgan’s first - Francis Jackson, head of EMEA business development and relationship management for JPMorgan Investor Services, said: “We call this deal ‘landmark’ because we believe it to be one of the most sophisticated asset pooling structures in the market to date.”

03JUL08: Northern Trust has hired Michael Wu as deputy chief representative of its Beijing representative office. Wu joins from State Street, where he spent 12 years in roles spanning operations, project management and business development across Asia Pacific. Most recently he was head of operations for North Asia.

02JUL08: Following a month of exclusive negotiations, KAS BANK has confirmed its acquisition of Delta Lloyd Investment Managers GmbH in Germany. Delta Lloyd Investment Managers GmbH, which has its head office in Wiesbaden, will be integrated into KAS BANK and will retain full responsibility for relationship management, growth of the client base and day-to-day securities services for its clients. The company will remain in Wiesbaden and operate under the new name KAS Investment Servicing.

02JUL08: Cofunds, which claims to be the UK’s largest independent investment funds platform, has appointed Brett Williams as chief executive to succeed Charlie Eppinger, who continues as chairman. Williams was the founding CEO of Selestia, the wrap platform backed by Old Mutual.

01JUL08: Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS) has unveiled a management reorganisation. The changes, which have been anticipated for several months, include the creation of seven international business lines and the establishment of a global sales and client management team.

The seven business lines are:

Clearing Services, headed by Philippe Robeyns

Custody and Trustee Services, headed by Etienne Deniau

Retail Custody Services, headed by Philippe Huerre

Fund Administration and Asset Servicing, headed by Serge Jacqueline

Fund Distribution Services, headed by Pascal Bérichel

Liquidity Management, headed by Guy d’Albrand

Global Issuer Services, headed by Jean-Louis Vayne

Sébastien Danloy will run the global commercial team. This sales group will include dedicated relationship managers and key account managers as well as a product development unit responsible for the marketing and packaging of SGSS’s offering. Two global IT and back-office teams will be consolidated under Jean Cadroy and Jean-Michel Leclercq respectively.

Alain Closier continues as global head of SGSS and Bruno Prigent becomes deputy head of SGSS. Alcibiade Vinot becomes chief administrative officer and Jean-Michel Mépuis is head of strategy and development.

01JUL08: BNY Mellon has opened an office in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

01JUL08: Chartwell Fund Management has gone live with the IFDS Managers hosted ACD service. Chartwell represents the inaugural client for IFDS Managers, a wholly owned subsidiary of International Financial Data Services, which provides hosted fund management solutions in the UK.

30JUN08: BNP Paribas has been mandated by Bestinvest to provide services to its new OEIC, IFSL Bestinvest Multi-Asset Portfolio. BNP Paribas will provide fund accounting, administration and custody services, with its specialist UK subsidiary, Investment Fund Services Limited, providing fund hosting services. Bestinvest was founded in 1986 and is one of the UK's leading wealth managers.

26JUN08: Steve Bowman is reported to be leaving Citi. Bowman, based in New York, had responsibility for pulling together all the bank’s services for hedge funds, and had reporting lines into both the investment bank and the investor services business.

26JUN08: C Hoare & Co. has appointed Cofunds Institutional as administrator for the investment funds held in its client portfolios. C Hoare & Co., a UK bank, currently looks after GBP1.6bn of assets on behalf of private clients, charities and trusts. Cofunds Institutional provides a specialist administration service for investment fund assets.

Diane Mills, head of investment management at C. Hoare & Co., said: “The Cofunds Institutional service represents a considerable step forward for the bank in the administration of investment funds, and will introduce significant operational efficiencies in areas including dealing, settlement, custody and commission processing.”

26JUN08: BNY Mellon has appointed Rex Wong as a market segmentation specialist within the global product management team. Based in Hong Kong, Wong will be responsible for market and sector analysis as well as defining and coordinating the implementation of future strategic growth opportunities across Asia. He will report to Francis Braeckevelt, managing director of global product management for Asia, who is based in Singapore. Wong He joins from State Street where he was most recently Asia chief operating officer for the investor services business.

26JUN08: Northern Trust has appointed Stephanie Saunders to head its dedicated infrastructure fund administration team, part of the firm’s real estate and infrastructure fund services department, based in Guernsey. She is responsible for managing a team of fund administration service professionals dedicated to infrastructure funds. She has close to 35 years’ experience in the finance industry, with particular expertise in alternative fund administration. Northern launched a specialist infrastructure fund administration desk during 2007.

26JUN08: BNY Mellon has extended its strategic alliance with Wilshire Associates, the risk and performance analytics specialist. The Bank of New York formed the alliance with Wilshire in 2004, before the merger with Mellon in 2007, giving BNY clients access to daily security level factor-based performance attribution, risk and characteristics for equity, fixed income and total plan assets. The new and expanded agreement extends the client base that can use Wilshire’s advanced analytics capabilities to include clients of both legacy BNY and Mellon businesses.

23JUN08: HSBC has restructured its fund services senior management team, continuing the amalgamation of its institutional and alternative fund services businesses.

Mike Martin becomes global head of fund services. He was previously head of institutional fund services, having joined HSBC in 1998.

Lilian Wong is appointed as head of fund services, Asia Pacific. She was previously head of alternative fund services for Asia Pacific, having joined Bank of Bermuda in 1986.

Scott Epstein becomes head of fund services, North America, moving up from head of alternative fund services in New York. He joined Bank of Bermuda in 2001 as vice president and senior client services manager.

Jayant Rikhye, who was deputy global head of institutional fund services and head of institutional fund services, Asia Pacific, is made head of HSBC Securities Services for the Middle East and North Africa. He joined HSBC in India in 1989.

23JUN08: BNY Mellon has appointed John Sin as vice president. Based in Hong Kong, Sin will lead a newly created team with employees in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. He will report to Michael Chan, managing director and chief operating officer for BNY Mellon’s asset servicing business in Asia, who is based in Singapore. Sin joins from State Street, where he had roles within client services, project management, relationship management and business development.

20JUN08: Brickburn Asset Management has selected RBC Dexia to provide investor services, including global custody, fund valuations and unitholder recordkeeping, for the company's newly-launched family of mutual funds managed by its subsidiary, Brickburn Funds Inc. Founded in 1997, Brickburn Asset Management specialises in the Canadian energy sector.

20JUN08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by Goldman Sachs International, Ltd and Rabobank to act as collateral agent for the first domestic Korean equity tri-party financing trade.

20JUN08: Northern Trust has been selected to provide correspondent services for Alpine Bank, a community bank based in Colorado.  Northern Trust will provide trust accounting and investment management activities through the TrustPortal, and provide domestic custody services. The TrustPortal is a wealth management solution for financial institutions.

19JUN08: Ross Whitehill is to join BNY Mellon as its new head of offshore management for the EMEA region. Formerly chief operating officer of Thomas Murray, the London-based industry consultancy, Whitehill will succeed Harley Murphy, who will be retiring from full-time employment at the end of August after eight years with the company.

Whitehill will have P&L responsibilities for BNY Mellon’s Luxembourg and Dublin operations, covering all aspects of offshore asset servicing, including fund accounting, transfer agency, financial reporting, and trustee and custody services for both locations. Before joining Thomas Murray in 1996, Whitehill had worked in custody sales for Chase, Standard Chartered and Morgan Stanley.

19JUN08: After only 15 months, Jim Clark has decided to leave his job as head of transfer agency for JPMorgan in EMEA. Clark, who was based in Luxembourg, is to return to State Street, where he held management roles for the firm’s offshore business in Luxembourg from 2002 to 2007. He will become managing director of the bank’s UK trustee business, State Street Trustees Limited, succeeding Donald Anderson, who is to retire.

19JUN08: JPMorgan has been selected by Accident Compensation Corporation of New Zealand (ACC) to provide custody and administration services to support ACC’s Australian portfolio, covering NZD1bn in assets. ACC was assisted in its review by Thomas Murray’s Melbourne office.

19JUN08: Northern Trust has appointed Angelo Calvitto as a senior relationship manager in its Melbourne office. He joins from the custody area of the ANZ Bank, prior to which he worked for State Street in London and Australia.

19JUN08: JPMorgan has been selected by East Timor’s government entity, The Banking and Payments Authority of Timor-Leste (BPA), as the global custodian and administrator for the Petroleum Fund’s assets. BPA is the future central bank of Timor-Leste and has responsibility for the operational management of the Petroleum Fund of Timor-Leste.

19JUN08: Northern Trust has been selected to provide asset servicing for the Employees’ Retirement System of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (ERS-PREPA), a public pension plan covering more than 18,000 active and retired members. Services include custody, accounting, compliance monitoring and securities lending for the USD1.5bn fund.

13JUN08: Tom Renyi has changed his mind. Renyi, executive chairman of BNY Mellon, is to retire at the end of July, just over a year after the merger of the two banks in July last year. When the merger plan was announced in December 2006, it was said that Renyi would stay in the post for 18 months following the completion of the transaction, with overall responsibility for integration. Renyi had been chairman and CEO of The Bank of New York for 10 years. Bob Kelly, BNY Mellon’s CEO, will add the role of chairman to his duties.

12JUN08: Following the termination of its 2005 agreement to outsource to The Bank of New York – a deal that was never implemented - Hermes Fund Managers Limited, one of the UK’s leading investment managers, has appointed Northern Trust to provide outsourcing services for middle office investment operations, fund administration and custody.

The anticipated middle office assets under administration will be GBP23bn, (USD45bn) while assets under custody, which will include the BT Pension Scheme – the UK’s largest – will be in excess of GB45bn (USD88bn). As part of the arrangement Northern Trust will also support the launch of Hermes’ new range of Dublin-based funds providing trustee, custody, fund accounting and transfer agency services. The appointment, which is subject to contract negotiations, is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2008.

11JUN08: BNP Paribas has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the equity prime brokerage business of Bank of America. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval, with completion expected in the second half of 2008. The deal will involve the transfer of client relationships, employees and technology systems. The business has more than 500 hedge fund clients, and more than 300 employees.

11JUN08: Following the current fashion, State Street has aligned its global alternative investment servicing capabilities. State Street Alternative Investment Solutions combines the firm’s hedge fund, private equity and alternative risk services under Jack Klinck, who joined the bank from Mellon at the end of 2006. State Street claims to service more than USD550bn of alternative assets, with more than 2,200 employees.

11JUN08: JPMorgan has launched an automated reconciliation service for OTC derivatives. The service integrates TriOptima's triResolve automated position reconciliation service.

10JUN08: BNY Mellon has been selected as overseas custodian for Fortune SGAM Fund Management Company’s first QDII (qualified domestic institutional investor) fund, the CCB Fortune SG Overseas Growth Equity Fund.

The Fortune SGAM Fund Management Company is a joint venture between China's Baosteel Group and Société Générale Asset Management, and is one of the first joint ventures between a domestic Chinese trust company and a foreign asset management company, with assets under management close to USD10bn. The QDII fund will invest in Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, and will be distributed in China through China Construction Bank.

10JUN08: SNS REAAL, a bancassurance company based in Utrecht in the Netherlands, intends to outsource securities processing to KAS BANK. The deal will include back office activities for SNS Bank’s securities services, which involves approximately 35 employees. Both parties expect to reach an agreement by the end of the third quarter.

10JUN08: Deutsche Bank has added Portugal to its sub-custody and clearing network. Portugal completes the bank’s custody offering in Euronext markets; it already offers custody in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. It has established a direct link between its Euronext platform and Interbolsa, the Portuguese CSD, and Banco de Portugal, the central bank. Deutsche now provides custody services in 29 markets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.

06JUN08: Since Ramy Bourgi joined Société Générale Securities Services last September to run emerging markets development, the business has made significant strides beyond its traditional markets. Now the firm has announced a breakthrough in India: State Bank of India (SBI) and SG have announced a joint venture which will offer securities services in India. Subject to regulatory approval, SBI and SG will hold 65pct and 35pct respectively of the equity in the new company. SBI SG Custodial Services will be based in Mumbai and will offer a range of services to both foreign and domestic investors, covering custody, depository, fund administration, registration and transfer agency services.

The banks predict that recent regulations permitting Indian mutual funds to invest abroad are likely to open an annual opportunity aggregating USD7bn of Indian investments abroad. SBI has had a successful asset management joint venture, SBI Fund Management, with Société Générale Asset Management since 2004.

06JUN08: BNY Mellon, which has a strong market share in the US exchange-traded fund sector, has been selected to provide services including fund accounting, fund administration, global custody and transfer agency for the WisdomTree Dreyfus family of currency ETFs, the first actively managed ETFs to offer exposure to foreign currencies. Mellon Capital Management, an investment boutique within BNY Mellon Asset Management, is acting as the sub-advisor for the currency ETFs.

“The merger of The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial has resulted in a stronger partner with more services and greater opportunities to expand our product offerings,” said Bruce Lavine, president of WisdomTree. “The services that we are receiving have surpassed our expectations.”

05JUN08: BNY Mellon has appointed Michael Faester as senior relationship manager for the Nordic region. Faester joins from Nordea, where he was responsible for global custody client relations. He will be based in BNY Mellon’s Copenhagen office. Faester worked on the BNY/Nordea marketing alliance, established in 2005 and disbanded at the end of last year. JPMorgan has subsequently announced plans to buy Nordea’s institutional custody business.

05JUN08: Northern Trust has launched a daily investment risk monitoring and reporting service. Thames River Capital, a London-based fund manager with more than GBP6bn AUM, will take the service as part of a recently extended mandate that now encompasses performance and risk analytics, as well as custody and fund administration.

04JUN08: Aberdeen Asset Management has appointed Citi to provide fund support services to its 26 US-based mutual fund portfolios. The mandate includes accounting, administration, transfer agency, compliance, chief compliance officer and website services for Aberdeen’s equity, equity, fixed income and sector funds. Aberdeen is one of the UK’s largest independent fund managers, with over USD204bn in assets under management.

Gary Bartlett, chief executive officer of Aberdeen Asset Management Inc., said: “We performed a thorough due diligence in consideration of numerous partners, and Citi was the right choice. They responded to our preference for a single provider with the combination of US regional expertise, a global operations platform, and proven capabilities across the spectrum of investment products. Our firm has experienced rapid expansion over the past 20 years in the European markets, and with the support of Citi we intend to mirror that growth here in the US.”

Aberdeen has a UK outsourcing agreement with BNP Paribas, and in 2007 announced an administration deal with SEI in the US.

04JUN08: Société Générale has launched a new clearing service for foreign remote members of the Athens Stock Exchange. SG claims to be the first custodian to have successfully carried out the clearance of a foreign remote member’s transactions in the Greek market. This initiative by SG follows changes in the ASE regulatory framework which now allows direct membership by foreign brokerage houses.

04JUN08: JPMorgan is to expand its fund services operation in Boston, after signing a lease for office space in the city's waterfront area. It will lease approximately 100,000 square feet whilst retaining its offices at 1 Beacon Street, and expects to hire more than 300 employees for its global funds services business over the next five years. The new site will replace JPMorgan’s current offices at 73 Tremont Street.

03JUN08: Société Générale has strengthened its grip on the French real estate investment fund market, winning two new mandates for OPCI administration. Both Immovalor, part of the AGF Group, and Viveris REIM have appointed SG as trustee, depositary and transfer agent for their OPCIs. Viveris REIM has signed up for the OPCI valuation service offered by SG, which includes the calculation and publication of net asset values for these funds. SG is now trustee and depositary for seven OPCIs on behalf of six external asset management companies.

03JUN08: Eaton Vance has gone live on Eagle Investment Systems’ data management and mutual fund performance platform after a seven-month project implementation. Eaton Vance, a Boston-based investment management firm which has over USD150bn of assets under management, has outsourced the servicing of its institutional business to BNY Mellon, Eagle’s parent. BNY Mellon provides back-office, custody, accounting and performance services for institutional separate accounts and non-registered funds.

03JUN08: Euroclear and the Nordic CSD (NCSD) have signed a memorandum of understanding for Euroclear to acquire all NCSD shares. NCSD, which is 99pct-owned by Nordea, SEB, Svenska Handelsbanken and Swedbank, is the operator of the Finnish and Swedish CSDs, Suomen Arvopaperikeskus Oy and VPC AB. The deal is expected to take place in the fourth quarter 2008. Based on year-end 2007 data, the combined group would settle the equivalent of more than EUR575trn in securities transactions, representing 198m domestic and cross-border transactions, and would hold more than EUR20trn in client assets.

03JUN08: CIBC Mellon has been appointed by Macquarie Financial to provide asset servicing for their corporate assets. “As we grow in Canada we need a dependable asset servicing supplier,” said Grant MacKenzie, chief executive officer of Macquarie Financial. “CIBC Mellon offers us an efficient and risk-controlled solution to meet our growth objectives”. Macquarie Financial, a member of the Australian-based Macquarie Group, is a Canadian mortgage lender headquartered in Toronto.

03JUN08: IFDS, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street and DST Systems, has launched a new hosted fund management business called IFDS Managers. David Moffat, group executive for business development at IFDS, said: “We are seeing significant demand for such hosted Authorised Corporate Director services from independent financial advisors and other distribution organisations now looking to offer their own investment fund ranges.” BNP Paribas launched a similar service last October.

03JUN08: Northern Trust is establishing a partnership with Pendo Systems, Inc., a provider of financial accounting solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work together to develop an accounting and financial reporting outsourcing solution for Northern Trust’s insurance clients, using the Pendo Systems BasisPoint investment accounting software.

02JUN08: The Bank of New York Mellon has shaken up its senior management team following the decision of Bruce Van Saun, the company’s chief financial officer, to leave. Todd Gibbons, currently chief risk officer, will become chief financial officer, with Brian Rogan, currently CEO of issuer, treasury and broker-dealer services, taking over as chief risk officer. Karen Peetz, currently CEO of global corporate trust, will succeed Rogan. A successor to Peetz will be named later.

02JUN08: Northern Trust has been selected by Hargreaves Lansdown to provide custody and fund administration services for approximately GBP1bn in funds of funds assets. Hargreaves Lansdown is a leading provider and distributor of investment management products and services to UK private investors.

02JUN08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has settled its first client transactions in Poland and Hungary. Branches were opened in Warsaw and Budapest earlier this year and the bank now offers full local clearing, settlement and custody services in both markets.

Andrzej Szadkowski heads operations in Warsaw. He joined from Bank Millenium, a Polish bank, where he was head of the custody business. Theofilos Mitsakos has been appointed head of location in Budapest, transferring from BNP Paribas Securities Services in Athens, where he was deputy head of banking services.

02JUN08: BNY Mellon has been named custodian for USD1.9bn in retirement and health system funds administered by Catholic Health East. The firm will provide domestic and global custody, cash management and securities lending services.

02JUN08: State Street Global Markets, the investment research and trading arm of State Street Corporation, has acquired SSISearch, a specialised service provider for international payment processing and settlement instructions. Developed with the help and assistance of the world’s largest settlement banks, SSISearch operates The Settlement Directory for CLS members. This central database provides asset managers, banks and other institutions with immediate access to verified standard settlement instructions via a secure website or State Street’s Global Link network.

02JUN08: Northern Trust has launched PassportLink, a system integration tool that offers a plug-and-play technology solution, enabling clients to communicate trade messages and reporting data between their internal front-office systems and Northern Trust’s custody systems. PassportLink allows clients to transmit settlement instructions or pre-matched trades from any order management system to Northern Trust’s web trade services solution. Northern Trust can transmit reporting information such as holdings, cash or income data to their clients’ underlying systems. PassportLink is compatible with a range of front office asset servicing systems and has already been tested and implemented successfully in conjunction with SimCorp Dimension and Wall Street Systems.

22MAY08: No surprises that WestLB Mellon Asset Management has appointed BNY Mellon to provide fund services to its Luxembourg-registered Longitude SICAV. The fund is a specialised investment funds umbrella, with assets of approximately EUR620m. BNY Mellon, which felt obliged to stress that there was a “thorough selection process involving four providers”, will service the SICAV from its Luxembourg operation and will provide fund accounting, trustee, custody, transfer agency, paying agency, domiciliation, listing and share class hedging services.

22MAY08: Stan Shelton, the long-serving head of trading services at State Street, has retired. No replacement has been announced.

22MAY08: Northern Trust has hired Douglas Gee as UK and Irish pension fund sales manager in the asset servicing group’s business development team, based in London. Gee joins from Morse Group plc where he was a business development manager for five years. He has previously worked at Computacenter Plc and BMC Software Inc. At the beginning of 2007 Jemma Broadgate resigned from a similar role at Northern to join JPMorgan.

21MAY08: The board of directors of each of VenGrowth's labour-sponsored investment funds have approved a decision to appoint CIBC Mellon as the new custodian for five investment funds. CIBC Mellon will replace the previous custodian, RBC Dexia, with transition expected by July. Based in Toronto, VenGrowth's private equity managers have invested over CAD1.3bn in close to 200 companies.

21MAY08: BNP Paribas has launched a private-label solution for self-invested personal pension (SIPP) plans in the UK. The SIPP solution enables advisors, wealth managers and asset managers to launch their own SIPP product, using the BNP Paribas administrative, regulatory and tax infrastructure.

20MAY08: Canara Robeco Asset Management Company, an Indian asset manager with USD930m AUM, has appointed HSBC to provide fund administration services. Canara Robeco is a joint venture between Canara Bank, one of the largest banks in India, and Robeco Group.

19MAY08: The Royal Liver Group has extended its GBP3.7bn mandate with BNY Mellon to include performance and risk analytics. BNY Mellon currently provides a range of investment services to the UK’s Royal Liver, including accounting, transfer agency and custody.

16MAY08: Chris Church will join SWIFT in August as chief executive of the Americas and global head of securities. He will report to SWIFT CEO Lázaro Campos and will be a member of the leadership council. He will also take responsibility for coordinating the securities steering committee of the board.

Church joins from BT Global Financial Services where he has been managing director of Radianz Services since 2006. In this role he was responsible for global sales, marketing, customer service, finance, product development and operations of the Radianz shared market infrastructure.

16MAY08: Mark Del Col has been named global head of sales and marketing for LaCrosse Global Fund Services, a provider of operations, middle-office and fund administration services to managers of complex hedge funds. He will be based in the New York headquarters. Del Col has more than 23 years of experience in the financial services industry, most recently as a managing director at SWIFT. LaCrosse, which was launched in 2006, is owned by Cargill and its alternative investment company, Black River Asset Management LLC.

15MAY08: RBC Dexia has been selected by Swisscanto Group to provide investor services including global custody, fund administration, transfer agency services and investment compliance for the company's EUR16bn portfolio of Luxembourg domiciled funds. Swisscanto is a joint venture of the Swiss Cantonal banks for investment and pension services.

14MAY08: Impax Asset Management has appointed BNP Paribas Securities Services to service its new fund, IFSL Impax Environmental Leaders Fund. BNP Paribas will provide fund accounting, administration and custody services. In addition, the firm will provide fund hosting services through its subsidiary, Investment Fund Services Ltd.

13MAY08: One of the few areas where BNY Mellon is significantly weaker than its competitors is hedge fund servicing. Now it is trying to close the gap. Although its acquisitions in the space have been widely viewed as failures, it is making another purchase, taking over LAMP Technologies LLC, a Dallas-based alternative investment administrator that specialises in servicing funds of hedge funds. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

12MAY08: The Bank of New York Mellon has appointed Chris Sturdy to a newly-created position as chairman of the Asia Pacific region. Based in Hong Kong, Sturdy will lead the development and implementation of the company's business strategy for the region and will chair its Asia Pacific management committee. He will report to Ron O'Hanley, vice chairman of BNY Mellon and executive committee member responsible for oversight of the Asia Pacific region, and Torry Berntsen, chief client management officer.

Michael Cole-Fontayn will succeed Sturdy as head of the bank’s depositary receipt business. Cole-Fontayn has been head of DR business development since 2003.

12MAY08: RBC Dexia Investor Services has appointed Susan Pike as global head, market products and services. In this newly-created role, Pike has global accountability for the development, management and service delivery for RBC Dexia's market products. She also joins the group executive committee. Pike was most recently global head, securities lending.

12MAY08: JPMorgan Investor Services has extended its compliance reporting services product to assist clients in monitoring their socially responsible investment restrictions. Through web-based technology, clients will now be alerted when their portfolios are nearing or have breached limits that they have set themselves according to environmental, social and governance criteria. The new criteria cover some 50 categories, including adult entertainment, gambling, tobacco, weapons, country ties, board diversity, corporate governance, climate change and faith values. Screening data is sourced from Institutional Shareholder Services, part of the RiskMetrics Group, which JPMorgan spun off in 1998.

12MAY08: More evidence of Deutsche Bank’s confused attitude towards the custody and administration business. Having sold its Swiss fund accounting business to State Street (see below), the bank has completed the integration of the former institutional custody business of Türkiye Garanti Bankasi A.Ş. (Garanti Bank) which it acquired in July 2007. Dinkar Jetley, head of Deutsche Bank’s trust and securities services/cash management financial institutions business, said: “Our intention is to further build out our services to include securities lending, clearing and fund administration onshore to provide an all-inclusive service to both cross border and domestic clients in Turkey.”

12MAY08: State Street has acquired Deutsche Bank’s fund accounting operations in Switzerland, a Fondsleitung under Swiss law. As a result of the deal, State Street will provide fund accounting services for 16 investment funds and approximately CHF4bn in assets. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.

12MAY08: Toshio Akiba, who previously supervised Euroclear Bank’s Tokyo representative offices, has joined Clearstream's Tokyo office as deputy chief representative, in charge of all large relationships in Tokyo as well as responsible for Japanese relationships worldwide.

12MAY08: State Street has signed a lease for a new operations centre in Krakow, Poland. The new 125,000 square foot building, which is scheduled to be completed in June 2009, will accommodate up to 1,000 employees. State Street currently has more than 150 employees in Poland who provide support for the company’s fund accounting business in continental Europe.

01MAY08: State Street has appointed Jay Hooley, vice chairman and head of the firm’s global investment servicing, trading and research businesses, as president and chief operating officer. He will continue to report to Ron Logue, chairman and CEO. The position has been unfilled since Logue vacated it in 2004.

01MAY08: Pascal Bérichel has been appointed head of fund distribution services for Société Générale. He will also become CEO and managing director of European Fund Services, the subsidiary that SG bought in 2006. Based in Luxembourg, Bérichel will be in charge of the international development of the business. His main objectives will be to establish the business in the UK and Hong Kong and to develop it in Eastern European and emerging countries. Bérichel has been at SG since 1984, and was most recently head of global issuer services.

30APR08: BNY Mellon has been appointed to provide global custody and cash management services for USD1.2bn for funds administered by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

29APR08: Société Générale has completed the migration of Pioneer Investments’ funds in Luxembourg, representing EUR75bn of assets under custody. The transfer involved 136 UCITs and 626 share classes. The deal with Pioneer involved the transfer of custody, clearing and settlement, depositary bank, fund administration and OTC pricing services. The migration marks the end of a two-year project, during which SG recruited 150 new staff.

25APR08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has appointed Graeme Perry as global head of agency lending. He joins from Banco Santander and has over 10 years’ agency lending experience, primarily at State Street. He reports to Sarah Fotsch, global head of liquidity services.

25APR08: BNY Mellon has appointed two new securities lending managers in London. Sean Greaves joins as a product specialist focused on securities lending sales initiatives, while Clare Bromiley-Carmen joins the client service team. Greaves joins from Citigroup, where he was relationship manager, securities finance, with responsibility for a range of European lender relationships, including pension funds, insurance companies, banks and central banks. Bromiley-Carmen was formerly at Royal Bank of Scotland, where she was manager, equity and stock lending, with project responsibilities that covered trading, trade support, collateral management, client services, settlement and network management.

24APR08: ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company, based in India, has appointed HSBC Securities Services to provide fund administration for over 100 schemes. The firm, which has assets under management of USD13.6bn, is a joint venture between ICICI Bank and the UK’s Prudential Plc.

24APR08: Northern Trust has hired Michael Jenks as global service manager within its global fund services group. Jenks will manage relationships with a number of Northern’s large investment manager clients. Based in London, Jenks joins from JPMorgan, where he was a relationship manager in the client management group.

22APR08: Citi has appointed Andrew Gelb as the head of its securities and fund services business in EMEA. Gelb will also run investor services products in EMEA. He will relocate from New York, where he has been running the direct clearing and custody products for Citi. He will report jointly to Neeraj Sahai, global head of securities and fund services, and Naveed Sultan, EMEA region head for global transaction services.

22APR08: Philippe Bens has been appointed as managing director of CACEIS Fastnet (Suisse) S.A. Bens has been head of business development for Switzerland and Northern Europe at CACEIS Bank Luxembourg since 2002. CACEIS, which is jointly owned by Crédit Agricole and Natixis, has EUR2.3trn AUC.

22APR08: Northern Trust Global Investments has made two senior appointments within its securities lending business. Sunil Daswani has been appointed as head of client sales and relationship management for securities lending in Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. Daswani is responsible for all securities lending client relationships outside North America. Prior to his new role, Daswani was regional manager for securities lending in Asia.

Daswani will be replaced by George Trapp, who has over 20 years’ of experience in securities lending, at Northern Trust. Most recently, Trapp was a senior sales and client relationship manager for securities lending in Northern Trust’s Chicago office.

22APR08: Eagle Investment Systems, the provider of financial services technology that is a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon, has opened a new office in Sydney, Australia. The office, which will cover Asia Pacific, will provide service and support to existing regional clients as well as developing new sales channels and assisting with client implementations.

18APR08: Mellon Transition Management Services, the transition management specialist owned by BNY Mellon, has promoted Jamie Cashman to managing director and global head of sales and marketing. In his new role, he will expand his responsibilities to cover all of the Americas and Europe. Cashman joined Mellon Transition Management in 2003 as director of marketing.

Separately, MTMS has opened a dedicated office in Sydney, Australia, and has appointed John Venardos as operations manager for Australia. Venardos reports to Christine Carr Smith, president and chief operating officer of the San Francisco-based business. Venardos will be responsible for providing transition management and implementation solutions to existing clients, as well as developing new business. He joins from RBC Dexia Investor Services where he was senior manager, transition and implementation.

15APR08: Citi has suffered a setback as it continues its integration of BISYS. Ronan Daly, the Dublin-based BISYS executive who had been appointed to run Citi’s alternative investment services businesses for EMEA and Asia Pacific, is leaving the firm. He is understood not to be moving to a competitor, but will remain involved in the alternatives sector. Daly is to be replaced by Karen Tyrrell, who also comes from BISYS.

15APR08: Northern Trust has been appointed as global custodian for the Employees Retirement System of the State of Hawaii. Northern Trust will provide custody and related services, including securities lending, cash sweep and performance reporting. The USD11bn fund serves 106,000 active and retired state and county government employees in Hawaii.

15APR08: BNY Mellon, which has developed a strong ETF servicing franchise in the US, has been selected to provide ETF services, sub-advisory services, transfer agency services, fund accounting, fund administration and custody services for the first three RevenueShares ETFs. The three index ETFs are weighted by the revenues of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s core domestic indexes instead of by market capitalisation, which has been the most common way to structure index funds. Sub-advisory services will be provided through BNY Mellon Asset Management.

15APR08: SEI has been selected by Silver Creek Capital Management to provide operations outsourcing services for the firm’s alternative investment funds. SEI will provide a complete outsourced solution for all of Silver Creek’s funds, including fund accounting, administration and investor servicing. Silver Creek is a fund of hedge funds management firm with offices in Seattle and New York.

15APR08: SWX Europe has appointed Mark Ryland as chief operating officer. SWX Europe is the London-based securities exchange owned by SWX Swiss Exchange. Ryland was most recently global head of equities IT at HSBC. Prior to this he spent three years as director at Merrill Lynch where he was global co-head of cash equity systems renovation.

15APR08: Northern Trust has appointed Eric Pouwels as managing director of its Amsterdam office, with responsibility for overseeing the firm’s activities in the Netherlands. In addition, Wim van Ooijen has been promoted to head of asset servicing client relationship management for the region. Pouwels joined Northern Trust in 2005, and moves up from his role as business development manager for Northern’s asset servicing activities in the Dutch market. He replaces Paul Cutts, who has moved to Australia to head the firm’s new office in Melbourne. Northern Trust opened its Amsterdam office in 2006.

11APR08: Northern Trust has been strangely quiet in Canada after hiring Rob Baillie in 2006 from RBC Dexia as country head. Now it has appointed John Folk as senior vice president, client service and operations for Northern Trust Canada. Based in Toronto, he will report to Baillie and will lead the firm’s relationship management, client service and benefit payments activities for institutional clients in Canada. He will also be responsible for the local management of securities lending and trade settlements. Folk joins after 14 years with State Street Canada where he was senior vice president, institutional investor services and co-head of investor services operations for the firm’s Canadian pension, investment management and corporate clients. Last autumn Steve Smit was appointed as head of State Street’s investor services business in Canada.

10APR08: Northern Trust has gone live with its first hedge fund middle office services client, New York-based Julius Baer Investment Management LLC (JBIM). Northern Trust’s middle office services for hedge funds facilitate trade communications between the investment manager front office, prime brokers, trade-matching utilities for OTC and exchange-traded securities, and third-party administrators. In the case of JBIM, Northern Trust is providing hedge fund administration services along with middle and back office support.

10APR08: The Bank of New York Mellon has named Mark Higgins as head of sales and marketing for global collateral management in EMEA. Higgins is based in London and reports to Staffan Ahlner, managing director and head of product management and sales for global collateral management in Europe.

Higgins has more than 10 years’ experience in the margin and collateral management business, most recently at Lombard Risk where he worked as product manager helping to design and develop the Colline collateral management platform. The Colline platform has since been incorporated within BNY Mellon's derivative margin management service.

10APR08: State Street has been appointed by the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System of Michigan to provide investment services for USD6bn in public fund assets. The mandate covers global custody, daily accounting, performance measurement, securities lending, cash management and investment compliance monitoring.

State Street also announced that it has been re-appointed by five existing US public fund clients to provide services for more than USD180bn in assets.

09APR08: Northern Trust has appointed Paul Cutts as head of its Australian office in Melbourne. Cutts, who joined the company in 1993, has relocated from Amsterdam where he was managing director of Northern Trust in the Netherlands. Northern Trust opened its Melbourne representative office in July 2007 after it was appointed as global custodian to Australia’s AUD51bn Future Fund.

09APR08: BNY Mellon has appointed Kathy Cuocolo as head of US mutual fund administration and exchange-traded fund services. Cuocolo reports to Jeffrey Bieselin, head of US investment operations, and is responsible for product administration, servicing and operations for mutual funds and ETFs. She had been running her own consultancy business after ending a 20-year career at State Street in 2003.

08APR08: Given State Street’s recent problems within its asset management arm, it is high time that the firm had a dedicated chief risk officer. Enter Maureen Miskovic, a board member since 2006, who will take up the newly created role. She will lead a team of more than 250 and will report to Ron Logue, chairman and CEO Miskovic will step down immediately from State Street’s board of directors and join the company’s operating group, its most senior strategy and policy-making team.

Miskovic, a British citizen, has served in a number of senior executive management roles. She was chief risk officer at Lehman Brothers, treasurer at Morgan Stanley in London, and spent more than eight years at SG Warburg in London, ultimately as group treasurer and head of risk management.

08APR08: Who said reciprocity is dead? Northern Trust has been appointed by Handelsbanken as its global custodian, covering USD15bn in new assets and extending a six-year relationship between the two banks. Northern Trust will act as the global custodian for assets from Handelsbanken’s clients in Norway, Denmark and Finland investing outside of the Nordic region, bringing joint client assets under custody to over USD50bn and representing over 30 clients’ investments.

In 2003, Northern Trust appointed Handelsbanken as its regional sub-custodian. The following year, Northern Trust became the first non-Swedish bank to provide custody and related services to a Swedish mutual fund managed by Folksam through an innovative partnership with Handelsbanken. The agreement also marked the first time a global custodian had partnered with a pan-Nordic bank for a mutual fund solution.

08APR08: CIBC Mellon has been appointed by J. Zechner Associates Inc. to provide asset servicing support for its family of pooled funds, including global custody, fund accounting, unitholder recordkeeping, foreign exchange and securities lending services. Established in 1993, Zechner manages over CAD2bn in assets for pension funds, institutions and mutual fund companies, family trusts, endowments and high net worth individuals.

02APR08: RBC Dexia Investor Services has appointed Simon Shapland to the newly-created position of head, sales and relationship management for Europe. Shapland, who joined the company in 2004, previously ran the sales and relationship management functions for the UK, Ireland and Middle East. Robert Manderscheid, who joined RBC Dexia at the beginning of 2007 as head of sales and relationship management for continental Europe, has left the firm.

02APR08: Northern Trust has received approval to open a representative office in Abu Dhabi. Michael Slater, who joined Northern Trust in 2005 to lead business development in the Middle East, has been named chief representative of the Abu Dhabi office.

02APR08: Société Générale and UniCredit have completed the transaction covering the sale by UniCredit of the securities business of the former Capitalia Group to Société Générale Securities Services. This business has assets under custody of EUR102bn and a total of EUR27bn in assets under administration in Italy and Luxembourg. Total consideration for the transaction is EUR195m, including Euroclear shares sold by UniCredit.

01APR08: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a US healthcare charity, has appointed BNY Mellon as custodian for USD9.5bn of assets. BNY Mellon will provide global custody, performance and risk analytics, and securities lending.

31MAR08: Northern Trust has appointed Steve Potter as president of Northern Trust Global Investments (NTGI), the bank’s investment management business. Potter replaces Terry Toth, who stepped down from the post last June.

Potter has been based in London since 2001, running the corporation’s international business for six years before his most recent appointment as head of EMEA. He is an executive vice president of Northern Trust and sits on the corporation’s management group. He will relocate to Chicago and report to Rick Waddell, president and CEO.

Replacing Potter as EMEA region executive will be Biff Bowman, currently executive vice president and head of client servicing for the EMEA institutional investor group. Teresa Parker, executive vice president and chief operating officer for EMEA, will succeed Bowman.

27MAR08: JPMorgan has announced an agreement to acquire the institutional global custody portfolio of Nordea. Terms of the deal have not been announced and are subject to regulatory approvals. Nordea is a Nordic leader in institutional global custody with approximately EUR200bn in assets under custody. As a result of the acquisition, JPMorgan plans to offer local depository services to domestic mutual funds through the establishment of new branches in Denmark, Finland and Norway, together with an expanded presence in Sweden. Nordea will retain its sub-custody franchise in the region. As part of the agreement, Nordea will appoint JPMorgan as global custodian for its internal institutional clients such as Nordea Funds and Nordea Life & Pensions.

The deal will mark the end of Nordea’s alliance with BNY Mellon, originally agreed in 2005 with BNY. The small number of mandates that were won through this alliance – which include Sweden’s AP7 – are not part of the JPMorgan acquisition. JPMorgan’s recent private-label custody deal with Swedbank is not affected.

JPMorgan claims to be the leading non-Nordic global custodian. Its current team of over 30 relationship, service, product and client technology people will expand to around 75. JPMorgan is not acquiring any of the Nordea infrastructure, but will be taking on front-office staff.

“Nordea wants to focus on services where we can truly add value to our customers,” said Birger Gezelius, head of financial institutions at Nordea. “Our current institutional clients will gain access to JPMorgan’s best-in-class global custody offering and value-added services, while allowing us to strategically focus on our core competencies.”

27MAR08: The Bank of New York Mellon has appointed Alan Flanagan as managing director of the company’s alternative investment services (AIS) business. Flanagan will lead development and expansion of the firm’s private equity administration services business in Europe. He is based in Dublin and reports to Rick Stanley, executive vice president and AIS head of product management. Flanagan joins from UBS Fund Services (Cayman) Ltd, where he was head of hedge funds business development for the Americas.

26MAR08: BNP Paribas Securities Services has confirmed that Patrick Colle is to become head of location for the UK with effect from 31 March. Colle joined BNP Paribas from JPMorgan in 2006 as head of the global clearing, settlement and custody business and is a member of the executive committee. Tony Solway, who has run the UK business over the past five years, has chosen “to pursue new challenges outside the bank”.

BNP Paribas recently lost one of its largest UK clients, Pearl Group, which moved GBP25.5bn of assets to State Street.

26MAR08: International Financial Data Services, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street Corporation and DST Systems, has appointed Simon Hudson-Lund as chief executive officer. Prior to this appointment, he was chief operating officer. Hudson-Lund joined IFDS as managing director in 2003, becoming COO in 2005. He replaces Charlie Eppinger, who has been executive chairman and CEO of IFDS since 1995. Eppinger is also to move up from CEO to chairman of Cofunds, the funds platform in which IFDS has a 24pct stake.

26MAR08: JPMorgan is to provide securities services to Cavali, Peru's central securities depository. Services will include custody and asset administration services for Cavali’s global securities portfolio. JPMorgan has also recently been awarded custody business by CEDEVAL, the CSD of El Salvador.

26MAR08: State Street and International Financial Data Services, the international transfer agency joint venture between State Street and DST Systems, have been appointed by Rensburg Fund Management to provide services for its UK unit trust funds covering GBP1bn in assets.

State Street has been appointed to provide custody and fund accounting, whilst IFDS will provide a full-service administration solution for these funds, including direct links to platforms and full STP integration with EMX. In addition, the Rensburg fund range will form part of the ‘Distributor Services’ solution that IFDS provides to more than 60 of the UK’s distributors and institutions.

26MAR08: Northern Trust has been selected by Lincoln Financial Group as custodian of its defined benefit retirement plan. Services for the USD1.1bn plan include securities lending and investment risk and analytical services.

25MAR08: BNY Mellon has introduced a new suite of alternative investment services for plan sponsors and not-for-profit institutional investors. The new services are designed to improve these clients’ ability to administer alternative investments. Newly launched services include data administration, reconciliation, document management, "as of" performance measurement, as well as integrated reporting and analysis through the firm’s Workbench information delivery system.

20MAR08: BNY Mellon has been appointed to administer the back office for NorthPointe Capital, LLC. BNY Mellon will provide a number of outsourcing services, including account administration, transaction processing, account reconciliation, performance measurement, client reporting and client billing. With AUM of $3.5bn, NorthPointe Capital is a US domestic equity investment management firm.

20MAR08: HSBC Securities Services has announced the following management appointments and structure changes to its London-based business development team:

Amit Taylor is named head of sales, asset managers. In his new role, he will lead sales activity for HSS Europe for the asset management sector.

Jamie Wise is named head of sales, funds. He will continue to lead sales activity for the firm’s European pension fund sector.

Mark Hamilton joins the sales team as business development manager, reporting to Amit Taylor. He was business development representative for the bank’s alternative fund services team in London.

Owain McNeill joins the sales team as business development manager, reporting to Amit Taylor. He previously worked for the software company YouDevise Limited, where he sold to the alternative funds sector.

Nick Bruce has been appointed as head of business development for central banks and reserve managers, whilst retaining responsibility for global custody sales in the MEA region. He will be supported by Ally Kyle, who has joined the team as business development manager having previously worked as sector head for MEA and banks within London client services.

20MAR08: The PowerShares India ETF, a global exchange-traded fund investing directly in Indian securities managed by PowerShares Capital Management, LLC, has selected Brown Brothers Harriman to act as the fund’s full service custodian, administrator and transfer agent.

“BBH displayed its global market strength by accelerating regulatory approvals to establish the needed legal framework to provide foreign investors direct investment in Indian equity markets,” said Ben Fulton, PowerShares executive vice president of global product development. Owned by Invesco, PowerShares Capital Management LLC runs more than 100 domestic and international exchange-traded funds, with assets of over $35bn.

20MAR08: Northern Trust has hired Stephanie Howell as a relationship manager in the UK pension fund team. She joins from JPMorgan where she spent nine years, the last two of which were as a relationship manager in the UK pensions and charities team.

14MAR08: Tony Solway is rumoured to be leaving BNP Paribas. Solway, who is head of UK investor services, has been at BNPP since the French bank acquired Cogent in 2002. Solway was the head of Cogent, which grew out of Henderson Investment Services, and was sold to BNPP by AMP, the Australian insurance group.

14MAR08: JPMorgan has been selected by London Pensions Fund Authority, the largest local government pension scheme in London, to provide portfolio administration and performance reporting for its alternative investment portfolio. The mandate represents JPMorgan’s first alternative investment portfolio administration outsourcing agreement in the UK. Services include cash management, cash flow tracking, board reporting, performance measurement and analytics.

JPMorgan is the global custodian for LPFA’s GBP3.6bn portfolio, and also provides accounting, performance measurement, class actions and securities lending services. JPMorgan has provided custody services for LPFA since 1991.

13MAR08: State Street has signalled its ambitions in the Nordic region by hiring Alan Nedergaard as regional sales manager. Nedergaard joins from Northern Trust, where he was head of Nordic business development. He joined Northern in 2005, having spent more than a decade at Danske Bank in Copenhagen, New York and London. Nedergaard will report to Simone Vroegop, vice president and director of State Street’s investor services business in the Netherlands.

13MAR08: State Street has acquired FinancialSockets, a specialist technology provider that offers global commission management services. The platform provides asset management firms with a solution for effectively managing and reporting on their usage of research and execution commissions.

13MAR08: It is no surprise that Swiss banks have done so well in the 2008 R&M Global Custody Survey, taking three out of the top four slots. But there are two real surprises in the survey. First, BNY Mellon has delivered on its promise to transplant the Mellon service culture, recording an impressive score of 5.77 out of 7.0 and finishing in fifth place overall, well ahead of its peers. The second surprise was the mysterious decision of BNP Paribas not to support the survey, meaning that it did not receive enough responses to qualify. One possible explanation is that the firm realised it was going to perform very badly, but trying to decode the motivations of the firm’s senior management is never straightforward.

For more information on the survey, visit www.clientalkback.com

11MAR08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by the O2 Pension Plan to provide global custody, investment accounting, cash management, securities lending and performance measurement services for assets valued at EUR1bn. This is the first time O2 has appointed a global custodian, having previously used its investment managers. KPMG advised the fund.

11MAR08: It looks as if Northern Trust’s extended search for a US sales director is finally over. The firm has appointed Jon Dunham as head of North America asset servicing sales. Dunham joins from BNY Mellon, where he spent more than 20 years in various business development roles, most recently as national sales and marketing director. Dunham reports to Penny Biggs, head of worldwide for asset servicing business development.

11MAR08: International Financial Data Services is to support the UK fund range of Lord Abbett Limited. IFDS will service multi-currency OEIC funds for Lord Abbett and providing STP integration with EMX and the NSCC, as well as direct fund platform links.

10MAR08: BNY Mellon has been selected by IPCRe Limited, a Bermuda-based reinsurance provider, as global custodian for its USD2.5bn portfolio. “BNY Mellon’s presence in Bermuda and its ability to provide full-service solutions for our growing needs were important factors when we made our selection,” said John Weale, senior vice president and chief financial officer of IPCRe.

10MAR08: Stephen Wynne has been elected chief executive officer of PFPC, the investment services provider owned by PNC. A 31-year PFPC veteran, Wynne has been president of PFPC since 2005. Timothy Shack will remain chairman of the PFPC board, and will continue to serve as PNC chief information officer.

10MAR08: Euroclear has appointed Jan Colaes as a managing director and head of the newly created project delivery services division. He will also become a member of the Euroclear Group management team. Colaes will be responsible for all generic IT services that support Euroclear’s projects and programmes including enterprise architecture, vendor management, IT resource strategy, and methods and quality. He joins Euroclear from InBev, where he was an interim manager fulfilling the role of director of global projects.

10MAR08: KAS BANK has launched a full back-office processing service for sellside firms. The new service will consolidate previously separate functions on a single platform. The new back-office function links directly to KAS BANK’s cross-border clearing and settlement platform. The integrated service has been launched for UK wholesale brokers (Model A and Model B) operating in the major European markets, and will be rolled out in our other primary markets, beginning with Germany, in the coming months.

06MAR08: BNY Mellon has been awarded a full administration mandate by Delaware Investments for its offshore UCITS III fund complex, Delaware Investments Global Funds plc. Domiciled in Dublin, Delaware Investments Global Funds plc has launched five sub-funds since December. Services include fund administration, custody and trustee services. BNY Mellon has acted as Delaware’s asset servicing provider since 2000, providing custody, securities lending, foreign exchange, cash management and client reporting services.

06MAR08: JPMorgan has been appointed by Devon County Council Pension Fund to provide global custody and related services for its GBP2.2bn fund. The mandate comes following a formal review by Devon County Council, assisted by Thomas Murray, to consolidate all of its assets with one global custodian. JPMorgan previously serviced approximately GBP250m of the Devon County Council portfolio.

06MAR08: State Street has made two appointments in its US public funds team. Mark Doherty has been appointed as a vice president of State Street’s institutional investor sales team and Michael Pettit has been named a vice president of client management.

Doherty, who will be based in New York, joins State Street from Northern Trust, where he was senior sales representative responsible for local and national government entities and insurance companies. Pettit, who will be based in Los Angeles, was a senior relationship manager at Northern Trust covering public fund and Taft Hartley pension and health plans for more than four years.

06MAR08: Cheviot Asset Management has appointed Cofunds Institutional as sub-custodian for the investment funds it holds in its client portfolios. Cheviot manages GBP2.3bn of assets, of which GBP250m is in investment funds. Cofunds Institutional is a new business unit launched by Cofunds, the UK’s largest independent investment platform.

Paul Barnacle, Cheviot’s head of operations, said: “Trying to integrate investment funds into portfolios of other securities is a very labour intensive process. Using Cofunds as a specialist sub-custodian reduces both our costs and our risks particularly because reconciliations are much swifter and simpler. And most importantly, this move improves our service to clients by providing assured settlement of trades and best execution.”

03MAR08: State Street has expanded its relationship with Scotiabank. The firm will provide custody, accounting and fund administration for five of Scotiabank International Wealth Management’s Cayman-based mutual funds. International Financial Data Services, a joint venture between State Street and DST Systems Inc., will also provide record keeping and transfer agency services for Scotiabank's Latin American and Caribbean branches to dealers across the region.

State Street has provided custody, fund accounting and investment management services to Scotiabank since 2002. With this expanded mandate to service the Cayman-based funds, State Street will now service approximately CAD4.5bn in total assets for Scotiabank.

03MAR08: Poland is becoming an increasingly important offshore location for investment services providers. The latest to open up in the country is PFPC, which started operations in Poland last month. Located in Wroclaw, the second largest centre of financial services in Poland, the new location will provide fund administration and hedge fund services similar to those currently offered through existing PFPC International Ltd. locations in Dublin, Navan and Wexford in Ireland, and Luxembourg.

PFPC offers sub-accounting, transfer agency, managed account, alternative investment, fund accounting, administration and custody services, with over USD2.5trn in total assets under administration.

03MAR08: JPMorgan has provided an early contender for the 2008 Buzz-Phrase Generator Award (see Analysis, March 2007). The firm recently won a gong as ‘Best Custodian of the Year’, beating a shortlist that included KAS BANK (yes, really). Here’s what the firm said – see if your marketing department can beat this.

“JPMorgan's growth in the pensions sector during 2007 was exponential and we are already on track for a very strong 2008. JPMorgan offers broad-based, innovative asset services across all regions and asset classes enabling us to support our pension fund clients to meet the demands of improving returns, mitigating risk and managing regulation. This award recognises that we are committed to supporting the increasingly complex investment strategies being designed by UK pension funds. In this environment, trustees can look to us in two key ways - providing timely and accurate information on alternative positions such as derivatives and at the same time assuring them that our fortress balance sheet denotes we are committed to the pensions industry for the long term.”

26FEB08: Northern Trust is beefing up its management team in Asia Pacific, following last year’s appointment of Gregg Behrens as regional head. Kathy Dugan will head up asset servicing product development for the ASPAC region. Dugan was most recently responsible the development and roll-out of Northern Trust’s market-leading cross-border asset pooling product. Northern has also made appointments in the legal, HR and risk management areas for the region.

22FEB08: BNY Mellon is on a roll. This year, it has won 12 of the 20 announced mandates so far, including this latest one. It is to provide fund services for GreenHaven Continuous Commodity Index Fund, an exchange-traded fund. BNY Mellon will provide creation and redemption services, ETF accounting and administration, and transfer agency services.

20FEB08: Old Mutual Capital has selected BNY Mellon to provide global custody, fund administration and accounting services for its mutual fund business, which manages more than USD5bn in the US. Old Mutual Capital operates the full service mutual fund and managed account platform of Old Mutual Asset Management, the US asset management group owned by Old Mutual plc.

19FEB08: PSigma Asset Management has appointed BNY Mellon to provide transfer agency and fund accounting to its four existing unit trusts: UK Income, UK Growth, American Growth and European Income, with an aggregate value of GBP350m. PSigma Asset Management, a UK-based investment management company set up in 2007, is a 50/50 joint venture partnership between Punter Southall Group and three founding partners.

15FEB08: BNY Mellon has been selected by The First American Corporation to provide custody services for its subsidiaries, including First American Title Insurance Company, First American Property & Casualty Company, and United General Title Insurance Company.

“BNY Mellon has provided custody services for our First American Home Buyers Protection subsidiary and was the obvious choice when we needed a partner to provide services for the other businesses,” said Christopher Del Moral-Niles, treasurer of First American.

14FEB08: RBC Dexia has been selected by Genus Capital Management to provide a range of investor services including global custody, fund valuations, transfer agency and investment finance for the company's CAD1.6bn investment portfolio.

14FEB08: Mark Davies has been appointed by Standard Chartered as head of intermediaries and investors sales for Europe. He will be responsible for the sale of securities services and cash management. He joins Standard Chartered from HSBC, where he spent over 30 years in a variety of roles, most recently as head of custody and clearing for HSBC in Europe. Davies is due to take up his new role in April and will be based in London.

13FEB08: The Halifax Herald Limited, one of Canada's oldest and largest independent newspapers, has appointed CIBC Mellon as asset servicing provider for the company’s pension fund.

13FEB08: BNP Paribas has changed its domestic custody partner in Turkey. Türk Ekonomi Bankasi A.S. (TEB) has launched its securities services business line in the Turkish market in collaboration with BNP Paribas. TEB Bank’s majority shareholder is TEB Financial Investments, a 50/50 joint venture between BNP Paribas Group and Çolakoglu Group. BNP Paribas has offered securities services in Turkey since 1996 through cooperation agreements, first with Ottoman Bank and then Garanti Bank.

12FEB08: Scotching rumours that recent events at the bank would limit the firm’s appetite for further deals, Société Générale has announced another transaction with UniCredit. Following its 2006 sale of 2S Banca to SG, UniCredit has now agreed the sale and outsourcing of the former Capitalia Group’s clearing, custody, depositary bank and fund administration businesses to SG’s securities services business (SGSS). The Capitalia business holds assets under custody of EUR102bn and assets under administration in Italy and Luxembourg of EUR22bn and EUR5bn respectively.

As part of the transaction, SGSS will also become the exclusive provider in Italy of securities services to the relevant businesses in the former Capitalia Group. This falls within the framework of the existing outsourcing agreement between UniCredit and SGSS, which was established following the sale of 2S Banca (now SGSS Spa).

Following this latest acquisition, SGSS will have close to EUR2,720bn in assets under custody and approximately EUR480bn in assets under administration. Completion of the transaction is expected by the end of March 2008.

12FEB08: Citi has appointed Satvinder Singh as head of direct custody and clearing in EMEA. He will report to Naveed Sultan, head of EMEA global transaction services, and Andrew Gelb, global head of direct custody and clearing. Singh was most recently global head of sales and relationship management for the direct custody and clearing business at HSBC.

12FEB08: BNY Mellon has appointed Kate Colchester as a vice president of sales for Asia for the firm’s alternative investment services group, which has over USD195bn in hedge fund assets under administration. Colchester will be based in Singapore and will report to Andrew Gordon, executive vice president of broker-dealer services & alternative investment services. She joins from Eurekahedge, a data and research house focused on alternative funds, where she was director of marketing and publishing.

11FEB08: Deutsche Bank has appointed four managers to its securities clearing business. All four are based in London and report to Rob Scott, global head of securities clearing, domestic custody services.

Kevin Buschhold joins as director, global product development, securities clearing, responsible for product development and strategy across the 28 markets in which DB operates. He joins from HSBC, where he spent 10 years with the bank’s global markets operations, in network management and exchange-traded derivatives relationship management roles.

Mike Clarke becomes director, global product delivery, securities clearing, responsible for the delivery of change management programmes for the clearing and securities finance products throughout the franchise. He joins the bank from Pershing Ltd, where he was a senior member of the project office.

Graham Ray joins as director, global production management, securities clearing. He comes from Northern Trust where he worked in securities operations.

Sean O’Neil, who joins as a vice president, will be responsible for securities finance product management, coming from UBS where he worked for 10 years in equity finance.

07FEB08: State Street and Boston Financial Data Services, a joint venture of State Street and DST Systems, have been selected by Fifth Third Funds, the mutual fund arm of Fifth Third Asset Management, to provide investment support services. State Street will provide fund accounting, fund administration, custody and securities lending services for USD13bn in assets, and Boston Financial will provide transfer agency and shareholder recordkeeping for FTAM’s family of 31 mutual funds.

07FEB08: BNY Mellon has been selected by Banco Central de Uruguay as global custodian for its USD4.5bn portfolio. BNY Mellon will also provide investment accounting, performance and risk analytics, and securities lending services.

07FEB08: Northern Trust has appointed two new staff in its North American global fund services team. Anna Jamroz becomes a sales representative, reporting to Penelope Biggs, head of worldwide business development for asset servicing. Robert Raimondi joins from Morningstar as a relationship manager, reporting to Peter Reinhart, head of GFS client relationship management.

07FEB08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by Stichting Pensioenfonds OPG in the Netherlands to provide global custody, investment accounting, regulatory reporting, performance measurement, attribution and analytics for assets worth EUR219m. The OPG Group is an international retail and distribution company for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. BNY Mellon will be working with the Blue Sky Group, the fiduciary manager recently hired by OPG to provide advisory and investment management services to the fund.

06FEB08: Following the promotion of Digger Donahue to managing partner, Brown Brothers Harriman has undergone a reorganisation. Investor services and the treasury and markets business lines have been brought together into a new division called investor services and markets, headed by Bill Tyree.

The current senior management team will stay in place, with each partner assuming expanded responsibilities. Andrew Tucker, who is currently based in London, will become head of the firm’s market-related activities. Susan Livingston will oversee the firm’s asset manager and fund client relationships and related services, while Jeff Holland will head client relationships and related services for financial institutions. Tim Connelly will head client technology solutions and sub-custodian network management.

Tyree joined BBH in 1985 in the corporate banking department. Since 1992, he has been responsible for the firm’s treasury and markets activities, including asset/liability management, cash management, foreign exchange, securities lending, strategy research and sales, as well as equity and funds execution. He became a partner in 2001.

01FEB08: Some five years after the sale of its global securities services business to State Street, is Deutsche Bank making a comeback? The firm has acquired HedgeWorks, LLC, a hedge fund administrator with around USD10bn in assets under administration. HedgeWorks, based in Carlsbad, California, currently services over 100 hedge funds, including both single-manager funds and funds of hedge funds. In addition to its Carlsbad office, it has staff located in Boston and the Cayman Islands.

“HedgeWorks is a strong fit with our business,” said Jim Della Sala, head of structured finance services in the bank’s trust & securities services business. “It complements our core strengths of providing high-quality third-party administrative services to the financial community, and the acquisition enables us to further strengthen our service offering to the hedge fund industry, where Deutsche Bank already has strong relationships.” Deutsche Bank currently offers administrative services to alternative asset managers from its offices in the Cayman Islands, Delaware, the Channel Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg and Mauritius.

01FEB08: Northern Trust is expanding its fund servicing operations office in Plassey, Limerick, taking additional space at its Hamilton House location in the National Technology Park as it continues to hire new staff. The Limerick office, which opened for business in 2007 and now employs over 80 staff, is Northern Trust’s second location in Ireland. The office provides mutual and alternative fund accounting, financial reporting, transfer agency, and private equity and property fund services.

01FEB08: Northern Trust has added liability benchmarking to its investment risk and analytical services product. The customised benchmarks give plan sponsors more accurate measurement of the performance of a liability-driven investment programme.

31JAN08: BNY Mellon has resolved one of its most difficult platform challenges. Last year’s merger resulted in the firm owning two strong data warehousing and management providers: Eagle Investment Systems, bought by Mellon in 2001, and Netik, in which BNY took a majority stake in 2004. Eagle has won out, with the firm having agreed to sell its stake in Netik. One of the clients using Netik is Hermes, the UK asset manager that struck an outsourcing deal in 2005 with BNY which has yet to go live. Hermes will continue to work with Netik.

30JAN08: State Street has made a major breakthrough in the UK insurance sector, where it has traditionally been weak. Pearl Group Ltd has appointed the firm to provide a comprehensive range of investment services for GBP25.5bn (USD50.5bn) in assets. Pearl Group includes four life insurance companies in the UK — Pearl Assurance plc, London Life Ltd, NPI Ltd and National Provident Life Ltd.

State Street will provide global custody, trade matching, derivatives processing and clearing, fund accounting, securities lending, trustee services, transfer agency, and transition management services to Pearl Group’s current life insurance businesses. The services will be provided from State Street’s operations in Edinburgh, London and Dublin. State Street Global Advisors currently provides investment management services to Pearl Group for cash related to Pearl Group's securities lending programme.

Tony Kassimiotis, chief operating officer of Pearl Group, said: “We sought a partner who could offer a broad range of high-quality services, as well as proven expertise in servicing the insurance industry, and State Street perfectly fit the bill.”

30JAN08: Citi has launched direct custody and clearing services in Kazakhstan. This is the seventh new market Citi has opened in two years taking its proprietary network – the largest in the world - to 51 markets.

30JAN08: Euroclear Bank is to improve its operational service levels for clients located in the Asia Pacific region. The bank will employ more than 25 new operations professionals in Hong Kong to work with Asia Pacific clients in their own time zones and languages. Several senior operations and legal experts will also be transferred from the company’s Brussels headquarters to Hong Kong. Euroclear has applied for a banking license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, converting the Euroclear Bank representative office in Hong Kong to a branch.

Euroclear Bank will also open a representative office in Beijing. It is expected to open in April, pending completion of all regulatory matters, with four full-time employees and headed by Tracy Chen, who is currently based in Hong Kong.

29JAN08: State Street has been appointed to provide custody, accounting and fund administration services to Columbia Management’s Excelsior Funds, which have approximately USD20bn in assets. With the new mandate, State Street now services a total of approximately USD320bn in assets for funds sponsored by Columbia Management, Bank of America’s asset management arm.

29JAN08: Northern Trust has established a partnership with financial applications company youDevise, through which it will offer daily portfolio management data to funds of hedge funds. The partnership will see Northern Trust become the first global asset servicing firm to adopt youDevise’s Hedge Information Provider, an online portfolio management system developed specifically for FoHFs.

29JAN08: The Dreyfus Corporation, an asset management subsidiary of BNY Mellon Asset Management, is to partner with WisdomTree Investments on international cash and fixed income ETF products. The products will be part of the WisdomTree Trust and will be co-branded and marketed by both organisations. Dreyfus will act as sub-advisor to the Trust. BNY Mellon will also provide custody and administration services. The deal builds on a relationship that began in 2006.

25JAN08: State Street has promoted David Gutschenritter to treasurer. Gutschenritter will be responsible for the management of State Street’s balance sheet, investment portfolio, and liquidity and interest rate risk management activities worldwide. He will continue to report to Ed Resch, State Street’s chief financial officer. Gutschenritter joined State Street in 2004 as the director of capital planning. Prior to being named executive vice president and department head, he was the managing director of global liability and capital management. The post of treasurer has been vacant since the abrupt departure of Ed O’Brien at the end of 2006.

25JAN08: The custody business is moving into the growing market for climate change products, with both Deutsche Bank and Euroclear announcing new product initiatives.

Deutsche Bank has launched a custody, clearing and settlement service for carbon credits. The service will ease the exchange of carbon credits among carbon investors and other participants in the carbon trading market and provides an integrated custody and safekeeping service. The service will cover carbon credit instruments issued under both the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Clean Development Mechanism set up under the Kyoto Protocol. Deutsche Bank will use the Depositary and Clearing Centre in London - originally the First Chicago CD Clearing Centre, which Deutsche bought from JPMorgan in 2006 – to deliver this service.

Earlier this month, Euroclear Bank announced plans to be the first international settlement infrastructure provider to offer settlement and safekeeping services for European Union Allowance units and Certified Emission Rights. Euroclear Bank estimates that the carbon emission rights market is worth over EUR25bn. From March 2008, Euroclear Bank clients will be able to settle spot contracts traded on the Climate Spot Exchange, over the counter or elsewhere and hold the allowances in Euroclear Bank, which will offer custody services for these holdings through its ClimateSettle product. Trade settlement via ClimateSettle will typically occur on a T+1, DvP basis, and will include multilateral netting. Settlement will be against euros initially; other settlement currencies will be added in line with client needs.

25JAN08: John van Scheijndel, CFO of KAS BANK and a member of the managing board, is to leave the bank in September 2008. He has decided on a “professional reorientation” towards risk management and asset management.

24JAN08: SEI has been selected by Graham Capital Management to provide operations outsourcing services for the firm’s hedge fund range, which includes hedge funds, managed accounts and proprietary vehicles. SEI will provide a complete operational outsourcing model including fund accounting, administration, reporting and shareholder services. Graham Capital Management has approximately 180 employees and manages assets of approximately USD5bn.

24JAN08: State Street is to provide Scottish Widows Investment Partnership with commission management services. Under the mandate, State Street will be responsible for overseeing SWIP’s commission sharing arrangements (CSA) with brokers and research providers. Acting as an intermediary, State Street will manage payment of all research commitments, including calculation of research splits to ensure that providers receive a single payment regardless of the number of brokers used.

“As our CSA program expanded, State Street offered us an innovative solution to simplify the commission sharing process,” said Tony Whalley, investment director of SWIP. “We are confident that this solution will help to significantly improve our program’s overall operating efficiency.”

24JAN08: BNY Mellon has been selected by Bank Gutmann AG and its asset management company, Gutmann KAG, to provide US equity trading services. BNY Mellon will provide trade services covering order capture, execution, affirmation/confirmation, clearing, settlement and reporting.

22JAN08: Close Wealth Management Limited has appointed RBC Dexia to provide global custody and foreign exchange services for assets valued at GBP1.5bn. Established nearly 40 years ago, Close Wealth Management Limited is part of Close Brothers Group plc.

21JAN08: State Street has appointed Tony Carey as senior vice president responsible for strategic product management for the firm’s investor services businesses in Europe. Carey joins from JPMorgan Chase in Ireland, where he was senior vice president of European fund accounting operations, with responsibility for managing the company’s fund servicing operations in Bournemouth, Dublin, Edinburgh, Luxembourg and Mumbai. In this new role, Carey will be responsible for managing and overseeing State Street’s product development activities in Europe. Carey will be based in Dublin and will report to Jim Phalen, executive vice president.

21JAN08: BNY Mellon has been appointed by engage Mutual Assurance to provide fund accounting services for its range of life assurance funds valued at over GBP625m. BNY Mellon has acted as global custodian since 2005 for engage Mutual Assurance’s wholly owned subsidiary, engage Mutual Funds Limited.

16JAN08: Every cloud has a silver lining. State Street may have had to take a USD279m after-tax charge to cover problems with its fixed-income activities within SSgA, but volatility in the fixed income markets led to a 34pct rise of trading services revenue in 2007 to USD1.2bn, whilst securities finance revenue increased 76pct, from USD386m to USD681m. At the end of last year, total assets under custody reached USD15.3trn, compared with USD11.85trn at the end of 2006. Total revenue increased 32pct, from USD6.4bn to USD8.4bn, with net interest revenue growing 55pct, from USD1.2bn to USD1.8bn.

15JAN08: JPMorgan has been selected by AustralianSuper, one of Australia's largest superannuation funds, to provide private equity fund administration and reporting services. JPMorgan claims that the mandate represents the first private equity outsourcing agreement with a superannuation fund in Australia.

AustralianSuper is one of Australia's largest superannuation funds, with more than 1.3 million members, over 100,000 employers and more than AUD28 billion in funds under management. The fund holds over 25pct of its assets in unlisted asset classes and will use JPMorgan for specialist investment services.

15JAN08: BNY Mellon is to administer the back office and provide custody for Cowen Asset Management, LLC, the recently launched asset management firm of Cowen Group, Inc. BNY Mellon will provide a number of outsourcing services, including transaction processing, custodian reconciliation, performance measurement and analytics, and investor reporting.

11JAN08: IFDS, the transfer agency business, has appointed David Moffat to a new development role. Moffat will be group executive responsible for business development in the UK market, reporting to Paul Roberts, IFDS managing director. This will cover sales in the asset management, wealth management and wrap account markets. Moffat was a director at Money Portal, where he was responsible for business development and strategic alliances. He has also worked at Fidelity, JP Morgan and Mellon.

10JAN08: BNY Mellon has been appointed as custodian for USD7bn of assets administered by the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System of Arizona. BNY Mellon will provide global custody, performance and analytics, foreign exchange and securities lending services.

09JAN08: Société Générale has appointed Andrew Duffin as UK sales executive in its securities services business. He will cover UK financial intermediaries, reporting to Eric Dickinson, head of sales for and product development for SG’s investor services business in the UK. Duffin joins from Clearstream Banking, where he was a sales manager. He has also worked at Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank.

09JAN08: CACEIS, the French asset servicing bank, has completed its acquisition of the securities processing and custody services businesses of HypoVereinsbank in Germany. The business will be renamed CACEIS Bank Deutschland GmbH. Some 550 employees will work out of its registered office in Munich and a second office in Hamburg.

03JAN08: Continuing problems in the credit markets have claimed another victim, as Bill Hunt, formerly CEO of State Street Global Advisors, has resigned. He goes as State Street announced a net charge, after taxes, in the fourth quarter of 2007 of USD279m, or USD0.71 per share. The purpose of the charge is to establish a reserve to address legal exposure and other costs associated with the underperformance of certain active fixed-income strategies managed by SSgA, the company’s investment management arm, and customer concerns as to whether the execution of these strategies was consistent with the customers’ investment intent. In aggregate, the reserve will be USD618m on a pre-tax basis. The impact to earnings of the net charge, after taking into account the tax effect of the reserve and associated lower incentive compensation cost, will be USD279m.

Jim Phalen, currently executive vice president and head of international operations for investment servicing and investment research and trading, is returning to SSgA as interim president and chief executive officer. Phalen will report to Ron Logue, State Street’s chairman and CEO. The company has initiated a global search for SSgA’s new CEO, which will focus on both internal and external candidates.