| Headline: Clearing and settlement - Now the real work starts Source: Euromoney Date: June 2000 Author: Julian Marshall With the euro and Y2K safely hurdled, the securities industry is sizing up straight through processing as the next obstacle to creating a more efficient global market. The unification of exchanges and clearing and settlement platforms, which should enable this to happen, remains stymied by political manoeuvring. But market forces, aided by technological advances are set to force change. While the front offices of investment managers have been eagerly seizing the distribution opportunities presented by the internet, their back offices have plenty of catching up to do. Those that rise to the challenge will pull ahead of the pack. Julian Marshall reports Stephen Smit has a vision for how he would like to see securities traded in the future. The model which Smit, a managing director in Europe of State Street's proprietary custody system Global Link, puts forward is radical only in its simplicity. New technology, he says, should allow for a cross-border equity transaction to be completed in four clicks of a fund manager's mouse. The process would run like this: A portfolio manager sitting in his or her office develops an investment idea and decides to buy, say 100,000 shares in a given company. |