GERMANY- Airline group Lufthansa says it has awarded State Street Corp. a custody and accounting services brief worth around 4.3 billion euros, meaning State Street retains the former Deutsche GSS client.

Last month State Street said that around 70% of GSS clients have been converted and that it expects the conversions “to be substantially complete by the end of 2004”.

Axel Tillmann, Lufthansa’s general manager of treasury, added that the deal also includes performance and analytics services.

Tillmann told IPE that no other candidate was considered for the depotbank mandate, which was handles in the past by Deutsche Bank’s Global Securities Services, which State Street bought for 1.5 billion dollars last year.

“State Street continues to expand upon its market leadership in Germany, helped by its acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s global securities services business,” the Boston-based group said.

Tillmann told IPE that State Street had won the business due to its state-of-the-art approach, which includes internet reporting, and “very good customer relations”.

HSBC Trinkhaus und Burkhardt, the German subsidiary of HSBC, which advises the fund in manager selections and provides asset-liability studies, acted as consultant in the transaction.

“We have strong track record of delivering high quality services to the German marketplace and our advanced technology enables us to provide the customised features that Lufthansa requires,” said Yoram Matalon, senior vice president and managing director of State Street in Frankfurt.

State Street has 9.4 trillion dollars (7.95 trillion euros) in assets under custody and 1.2 trillion dollars under management.

In January Franco-German pharmaceuticals company Aventis awarded a Depotbank mandate to State Street for its 1.7 billion euros of funded pension arrangements in Germany.