Only a unification of the current clearing and settlement structures in Europe will meet the needs of the market place here, Thomas Perna, senior executive vice president of Bank of New York told a recent Euroclear conference.
The securities industry should be moving to a single entity in Europe to provide trade matching clearing and settlement. “This would alleviate many of the risks and costs associated with cross border investing.”
Such an approach would enable market participants to avoid “the various settlement and priority rules and restrictions of the current environment and benefit from the associated economies of scale and scope”.
Perna suggested that the organisation should be user-owned and controlled to avoid concerns over “monopolistic pricing practices”. “The user community needs finally to take control and not allow the management of the individual entites to stand in the way of progress.”
He added: “The danger is clearly in allowing politics, egos or the defenece of individual fiefdoms to hinder the creation of such a utility.”