State Street announced today that it had broken ground on the construction of the second building on the site of the new State Street Financial Center Europe, located at 49 avenue J.F. Kennedy in Luxembourg’s Kirchberg business district. Adjacent to the new facility that opened on June 13, the second building will house approximately 300 employees of State Street’s shareholder services business. It is expected to open for business by the end of 2003.
“State Street’s continued expansion in Luxembourg underscores our commitment to the European market, and to meeting the needs of our institutional investors,” says Tim Caverly, State Street’s director of investment services in continental Europe. “Luxembourg is the second largest mutual fund market in the world and the domicile of choice for pan European investment funds. Once completed, our second building at State Street Financial Center Europe will house our European shareholder services team in a single location, allowing us to service global investment managers all the way from product to consumer. “
The centrepiece of the integrated product State Street offers from Luxembourg is iFAST, the multi-lingual, multi-currency shareholder recordkeeping system developed by International Financial Data Services, the joint venture between State Street and DST Systems. “The iFAST platform is unique as it has been specifically designed to meet the local and global market servicing requirements of non-U.S. domiciled retail and institutional investment funds, is fully web enabled, and features state-of-the-art, automated workflow distribution,” explains the bank. “In addition, it offers real-time access in a remote, full-service or shared environment to both distributors and clients, and can be effectively linked with major hub services.
Caverlrey describes iFAST as “a major breakthrough in shareholder servicing. Not only can it improve operational efficiencies for asset managers across every fund category and multiple share classes, it also works as effectively on a local level as it does in the global market. It can also be securely accessed via the web from any location.”