"I know success is hard to write about, but you should congratulate the entire financial services industry - the banks, the broker dealers, the custodians, the clearing systems, the market-data providers - for their efficiency, commitment, resilience and professionalism," says Jacques Favillier, Emu project co-ordinator at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. Several weeks after the birth of the euro, there is still a note of faint disbelief in Favillier's voice that financial markets didn't suffer major disruptions during the changeover weekend. "It's been a big surprise. It's gone far better than I thought," he says.
The euro conversion is the kind of test that the financial services industry has often failed in the past. Operations staff in London flinch at a litany of failure that includes a messy Big Bang in 1985, the expensive failure of the London stock exchange's Taurus settlement system in 1993, and a troubled debut for Crest. Now the industry has a major technical success to celebrate and build on.
The next big challenge the industry faces is year 2000. It will be somewhat different, more of an information technology project, though it could become a more wide-ranging business issue if, for example, investors withdrew money from the markets because they feared that computer failure would wipe out records of their investments.