Euroclear has successfully launched the ESES Euroclear Settlement for Euronext-zone Securities (ESES) platform in France.
This will consolidate the securities-transaction processing platforms of the Belgian, Dutch and French central securities depositories (CSDs) onto one system for both domestic and cross-border transactions.
ESES will process transactions according to EU-wide agreed harmonised rules and practices, and may go towards removing the barriers identified by the Giovannini Group. It will also support NYSE Euronext’s Single Order Book for transactions emanating from the Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris bourses.
Euroclear also announces today that it will put in place a harmonised tariff for the processing of all settlement, custody and related transactions involving equity, fixed-income and other securities from the three ESES CSDs.
As a result, it is estimated that CSD clients will save a total of more than 15 million, or 10% per year, once all the CSD platforms migrate to ESES in 2008. Once the Single Platform is launched in 2010, it is expected that clients will benefit from tariff savings of 50 million and above 60 million by 2012, in line with predicted volume growth.
Altogether, the Single Platform will deliver annual savings of 300 million to clients.
“ESES is an excellent illustration of what can be achieved through extensive and fruitful consultation with the market. In less than a year, Euroclear will deliver a single, harmonised transaction-processing solution so that Belgium, France and the Netherlands will operate as a single market. We are already well advanced in our plans to include the UK and Irish markets, as well as those markets served by Euroclear Bank. Thus, a single post-trading market for Europe is becoming a reality,” says Pierre Francotte, chief executive officer, Euroclear SA/NV.