Tim Steele
- Features
RBC Dexia's optimism
Monkey fingers, toe-jam football, joo joo eyeballs and walrus gumboots not unsurprisingly failed to put in an appearance, but when Royal Bank of Canada’ s Global Services, its securities services operation and Luxembourg-based Dexia BIL announced last summer that they were to come together to form a new joint venture, ...
- Features
A time for specialists
Global custody may today enjoy a far higher profile than was once the case, but it will nonetheless strike some as incongruous to talk about ‘superstars’ in connection with the often prosaic business of securities servicing. But such rare and fabulous creatures do nonetheless exist, and few would dispute that ...
- Features
More to do on settlement
Tim Steele Alongside safekeeping, settlement is one of the foundation stones of the classic ‘hold and settle’ custody model, and in theory one of the most straightforward functions performed by a custodian bank. Yet figures produced by UK-based Amaces show that missed settlement deadlines remain a concern. The firm currently ...
- Features
MiFID on radar screen
In my June 2005 column I wrote that, given the immense scope of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), and the extremely tight April 2007 implementation deadline set by the European commission, “burying one’s head in the sand is patently not an option”. The good news is that in ...
- Features
The makings of a winner
Year-end prognostications about the evolution of the securities services product set are always an ill-advised enterprise – after all, it was only after the fourth year of commentators touting it as the next big thing that outsourcing finally deigned to take off as ‘predicted’. However, if I were a betting ...
- Features
Outsourcing maestro axed
The sudden removal of veteran executive Ramy Bourgi and head of securities Neil Henderson from their posts at JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services (WSS) was perhaps inevitable following the long telegraphed collapse of the custodian’s flagship outsourcing arrangement with Schroders Investment Management. That said, given the retirement of Tom Swayne, head ...
- Features
Message in a bottle
The spectre of regulation, interference by Europe’s political classes and the perils of industry complacency joined those hardy perennials standards and market practice at the top of the agenda at Sibos – the annual payments and securities processing jamboree organised by messaging co-operative SWIFT, held this year in Copenhagen. Although ...
- Features
Shape of things to come
There is no smoke without fire, runs the old saw, and sure enough the long predicted – if oft denied – merger between the Royal Bank of Canada’s Global Services securities services operation and Luxembourg-based Dexia BIL has finally come to pass. First rumoured back in early 2003, the deal ...
- Features
Hats off time
While a number of commentators, myself included, have been rather unkind to the European Securities Forum (ESF) over the past few years, the organisation has brushed aside its critics and soldiered doggedly on with efforts to bring about the harmonisation and integration of European clearing and settlement processes. So does ...
- Features
Wealth market lure
One of the fastest growing and most profitable segments within financial services, the wealth management marketplace is also highly competitive and fragmented, with independent research showing that no single provider holds more than 2% of the wealth market. Indeed, the top 20 providers globally represent only 12% of financial assets ...
- Features
BNY sets out its stall
There is nothing like starting the New Year with a statement of intent, and the Bank of New York (BNY) has certainly been fast out of the gate. It marked the arrival of 2005 with a clutch of new deals, alliances and acquisitions, including the purchase of Luxembourg retail transfer ...
- Features
Taking no prisoners
When the star of the cult Sixties TV show The Prisoner was not being pursued around the Welsh coastline by amorphous white blobs or grappling manfully with yet another convoluted, would-be existential conceit, Patrick McGoohan could be found securing his place in the glittering pantheon of pop culture with the ...
