Calastone Limited has announced that Henderson Global Investors has signed an agreement to make its funds available via the global Calastone transaction network.
In April 2009 Henderson bought New Star Asset Management. From the outset, the New Star funds will be made available on the Calastone network, with Henderson funds to follow in early 2010 following consolidation of the Henderson and New Star retail books of business.
By connecting to Calastone, providers are able to offer their open architecture funds to a wide variety of investors irrespective of domicile or preferred messaging protocol.
Commenting on the agreement, Kevin Lee, Managing Director of Calastone said: If the pace of sign-up is any indicator, we are witnessing an industry on the cusp of change. The days of excessive transaction charges and unnecessary membership fees are numbered. Calastone is positioned to help the industry become fully automated without needing to invest in technology or incur prohibitive membership fees. Calastone normalises all transaction instructions to become ISO 2022 compliant and delivers them to the recipient in the way they want to receive them. This enables firms to transact not only domestically but also to take advantage of the global investment opportunities on offer through our growing list of sizeable distributors.
Andy McRobert, Head of Retail Operations at Henderson Global Investors added: We continually review how we can increase efficiency by identifying investment and technology opportunities. We have been impressed with how Calastone is providing the industry with the means to take advantage of the scale of transaction flow available via a truly global mutual fund market place. We are confident Calastones business model and flexibility will help us achieve and manage our ambitions for future growth.