Link Up Markets |
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History In April 2008 Clearstream Banking Frankfurt founded together with the Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) of Austria, Denmark, Greece, Norway, Spain and Switzerland the joint venture Link Up Markets to improve efficiency and reduce costs of post-trade processing of cross-border securities transactions in Europe. The founders: - Clearstream Banking AG Frankfurt (Germany)
- Hellenic Exchanges S.A. (Greece)
- IBERCLEAR (Spain)
- Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG (Austria)
- SIS SegaInterSettle AG (Switzerland)
- VP Securities Services (Denmark)
- VPS (Norway)
New members: - CSE (Cyprus) - September 2008
- STRATE (South Africa) - September 2009
- MCDR (Egypt) - March 2010
Principle and workflow Each CSD has direct access to the services of the other CSDs by connecting to the infrastructure of Link Up Markets. The solution can be provided quickly and with minimal adaptations for the participating markets due to leveraging the existing infrastructures and processes of each CSD. As a result CBF's customers benefit from a single and direct access to almost 50 % of the European securities market. They receive consistent best-in-class CSD settlement and custody services which are translated into reduced cross-border transaction costs and savings from a harmonised set of processes. The Link Up Markets IT solution was launched on 30 March 2009. CBF connected to it on the same day. By connecting to the Link Up Markets infrastructure, CBF is able to access the services of the other linked CSD markets.
Actions and benefits of each involved party CSD1 customer: Use of existing systems / interfaces or ISO15022 No need to be customer of the Issuer CSD DvP - payment processed via TARGET2-Cash
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CSD1 as Investor CSD: Clearstream as Issuer CSD:
Services for settlement Settlement in central bank money via CASCADE and TARGET2-Cash for Euro-transactions Settlement in other currencies (DKK, NOK, CHF) via CASCADE by involvement of cash correspondents Both matching and settlement take place in the Issuer CSD (home market principle) Management of the whole instruction lifecycle
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Services for custody Processing of mandatory and voluntary corporate actions including the respective cash and stock distributions Income payments Tax relief at source and tax reclaim services via Issuer CSD according to domestic market practice Notification of general meetings and proxy voting via Issuer CSD according to domestic market practice Cash forecasts
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For all events the service scope includes: Information management of data and events (i.e. collection, validation, matching, enrichment, guarantee that information is from the issuer/responsible agent) Processing and reporting as per SMPG-guidelines ( Securities Markets Practice Group by Swift) Instruction processing (i.e. calculation, deadline monitoring, default instructions, standing instructions, buy/sell of subscription rights) Pending transaction and compensation processing – according to domestic market practice
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