Banking, settlement and custody

Banking, settlement and custody services are in great demand on securities markets with extremely high trading volumes. Clearstream International – a 100 percent subsidiary of Deutsche Börse – is Europe’s leading provider of these back office services for shares and bonds in national and international trading.

Only a part of the value-added chain is generated by trading; the settlement of transactions is far more complex. When a trade is concluded, the individual positions are entered and cash is settled for securities. This is followed by a credit entry in the customer's custody account and, parallel to this, the securities are held in a central depository.

Every day Clearstream settles approximately 450,000 transactions involving more than 700,000 securities. With its international network of participants, Clearstream covers almost 50 markets. In its custody accounts Clearstream holds shares, bonds and funds to the value of more than € 11.4 trillion. Most securities are no longer stored or transported physically but entered into electronic storage media.

Deutsche Börse completely took over Clearstream in the summer of 2002. Prior to this, it had already had a 50 percent stake in the Luxembourg-based company. As a result of this takeover, Deutsche Börse has emerged as the leading provider of integrated services for the trading and settlement of shares and fixed-interest securities.