Production of Global Custodian’s flagship documentary, “Opportunities and Challenges in the European Securities Services Industry” (internally called “Opportunities and Challenges” for short), took GC staff on a whirlwind tour around Europe and the United States. Filming took place in Boston (Santander), New York City (The Bank of New York Mellon and JPMorgan), Paris (Societe Generale and BNP Paribas) and London (BNP Paribas, SEB, ICAP, Clearstream, Euroclear, RBC Dexia and SWIFT) from October to December 2007.
Knowing this would be the first ever documentary covering exclusively the securities services industry, we did our best to include as many industry heavyweights and knowledgeable individuals as possible. This is where Opportunities and Challenges really shines: We featured the CEOs of both Societe Generale Securities Services (Alain Closier) and BNP Paribas Securities Services (Jacques-Philippe Marson); the network managers at The Bank of New York Mellon (Kevin Smith), JPMorgan (Edward Neeck) and Santander (Craig Perrin); numerous heads of sub-custody; industry experts from ICAP, SWIFT and Euroclear; and of course our own editor-in-chief and one of the industry’s leading authorities, Dominic Hobson.
The idea to produce a documentary on the industry was Matthew White’s, Global Custodian’s international publisher. From July through production in December and certainly after the film was released, White oversaw the publishing side of the project and was the chief liaison with the documentary’s sponsors. And many thanks to those sponsors — Societe Generale Securities Services, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Santander Securities and SEB — without whom the project never would have made it off the ground.
This project truly necessitated the help of many of us at GC: other than White, the documentary also involved Dominic Hobson, Global Custodian’s editor-in-chief, who oversaw the narrative structure and appeared in the film; Ellie Behling, reporter, who assisted with filming and conducted several of the interviews; Muzaffar Karabaev, director of research, who handled logistics of producing a project of this magnitude; and members of our tech team, many of whom helped in various ways. I served as the project manager and produced the documentary.
A DVD copy of “Opportunities and Challenges” was released with the Winter 2008 edition of Global Custodian magazine. It has also been published on our Web site, which means anyone — subscribers and non-subscribers alike — may view the documentary.
E-mail me or comment this post below with your feedback.
Christopher Gohlke
Multimedia Editor,
Global Custodian magazine
cgohlke@www.globalcustodian.com