CLEARSTREAM ROLLS OUT SAME-DAY CURRENCY DEADLINES IN ASIAN MARKETS

Posted March 5, 2009

LUXEMBOURG – Clearstream, the International Central Securities Depositary (ICSD) unit of Deutsche Börse Group, is the first ICSD to offer same-day currency deadlines for leading Asian-Pacific currencies: the Singapore dollar (SGD), the Hong Kong dollar (HKD), the Japanese Yen (JPY) and the Australian dollar (AUD), allowing customers managing balances in these currencies to benefit from deadlines close to their local market deadlines.

Clearstream began offering the same-day deadlines for the Singapore Dollar in December 2008, and for the Hong Kong Dollar on March 2, 2009. Clearstream will begin same-day service for the Australian Dollar and the Japanese Yen on March 23, 2009.

The move is part of a drive by Clearstream to provide customers with Asia-Pacific market settlement solutions that are as efficient as those offered in US Dollars, Euros and other major currencies and to materially reduce their funding costs. Due to time-zone differences, Asia-Pacific customers have been historically disadvantaged by the need to pre-fund or finance their settlement operations in advance of their normal cash management activities in Asia-Pacific currencies.

“We are constantly evaluating ways to strengthen our commitment to the region,” says Philippe Metoudi, a Hong Kong-based Clearstream Board member who is responsible for Clearstream’s Asia, Pacific, Middle East and African business. “Since we opened in Asia in 1992, the region has generated significant growth for Clearstream. With these changes, our aim is to complement our presence in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo with an offering that makes all our services available throughout the local business day.”

Clearstream will complement the enhancements to its currency deadlines with the rollout of a same-day settlement service in the Asia-Pacific securities markets within the coming year. With the enhancement, Clearstream aims to make available the full range of its ICSD services throughout the Asia-Pacific business day. The scope of services benefiting from the new environment include not only settlement itself, but also instruction validation, matching, domestic market instruction handling and feedback, instruction sequencing, provisioning, collateral allocation and substitution and customer reporting.