Global Custodian Spring 2019 | Page 9

[ P E O P L E O N T H E M O V E NEWS ROUND-UP DBS, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. The PoC will explore whether DLT can help simplify the currently inefficient manage- ment of shareholder meetings and the associated voting processes that are often time-consuming and resource intensive. ˜ ˜ Apex Group has announced it will acquire fund administrator Atlantic Fund Services, which has been a frequent recipient of mutual fund administration awards from Global Custodian following consistent results in our annual surveys – earning recognition for compliance and value over the past two years. Apex is also set to takeover US private equity fund administrator Broadscope making it four deals in the first three months of the year. ˜ ˜ Northern Trust is set to roll out a new asset servicing technology architecture that will sit on top of its existing custody and fund administration platforms. The event-driven architecture, called Matrix, will aim to centralise all of the data cap- tured by underlying custody, fund admin- istration and transfer agency platforms. ˜ ˜ Deutsche Bank will move its global collateral management operations to a cloud-based platform operated by CloudMargin. The move makes Deutsche Bank the first of the major global banks to adopt cloud technology for collateral and margin management and is part of the German bank’s global transformation and cost savings programme. ˜ ˜ The London Stock Exchange has acquired a 4.92% stake in Euroclear for €278.5 million, following a similar move by one of its trading venue rivals last year. Euroclear is privately owned by over a hundred user-shareholders and has seen a number of transactions in its shares over the past 12 months. | N E W S R O U N D - U P ] TOP PREMIUM NEWS ˜ ˜ A new securities lending platform, pow- ˜ ˜ State Street is introducing a new ap- ˜ ˜ BNP Paribas Securities Services has been ˜ ˜ BNY Mellon’s chief executive outlined ered by blockchain technology and backed by Deutsche Boerse, is set to launch in the next six months with a number of banks expected to be day-one participants. Deutsche Boerse’s Clearstream business is one of the main back- ers for HQLAx, a securities lending platform using R3’s blockchain technology, that allows collateral to become tokenised and held by a custodian without physically moving. selected to provide global custody services to China Merchants Bank (CMB). The man- date will also cover custody and settlement services for CMB’s international fixed income securities, derivatives and equities assets in Hong Kong, Singapore and the US. ˜ ˜ Societe Generale has agreed to sell its South African custody, trustee and clearing business to Absa Group, while also announc- ing it will shut down its securities lending and borrowing services at the end of the first quarter. The deal will see Absa Group enter the South African custody and trustee space five years after selling its own business to Standard Chartered. ˜ ˜ SS&C Technologies have started to inte- grate the flagship products of Eze Software and Intralinks into its fund administration business. Rahul Kanwar, president and chief operating officer for SS&C Technologies, explained it has already implemented some synergies with Intralinks’ products. SS&C completed the acquisition of Intralinks in November for $1.5 billion. ˜ ˜ Broadridge has conducted the first proof of concept of a blockchain-based proxy vote in Japan. Alongside ICJ, a joint venture company of Broadridge and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the proxy vote took place using Quorum as the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT). proach to doing business with its biggest cli- ents, including a new committee evaluating pricing decisions and their impact across the bank. The new approach includes a “One State Street experience”, a full front-to-back plat- form combining services from Charles River Development (CRD) and its traditional custody and fund administration business. to investors it is onboarding a number of high-profile clients for its Pershing busi- ness, and is planning further improvements to its asset servicing division. Charlie Scharf, CEO and chairman of BNY Mellon, explained on its fourth quarter earnings call that while revenue for Pershing declined 2% year-on-year, it is preparing to bring on a strong line-up of new clients. ˜ ˜ BNP Paribas Securities Services has lost a major fund administration and custody mandate from DWS to service €240 billion of its assets after a mutual agreement to terminate the deal. The landmark deal for the French custodi- an was announced in June 2018 as DWS, for- merly Deutsche Bank Asset Management, picked BNP Paribas Securities Services for its funds in Luxembourg and Germany. ˜ ˜ The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in talks with State Street over a potential settlement alleging the bank had overcharged certain custody clients. State Street revealed in its annual report that the SEC is in the process of bringing an action against the bank claiming that it overcharged registered investment companies for custody expenses. The action would accuse State Street of violating the Investment Company Act of 1940 through the overcharges. Spring 2019 globalcustodian.com 9