Clearstream begins 2005 with further growth

Clearstream began 2005 with growth in its core businesses and new business streams continuing progress made in 2004. The value of assets held in custody on behalf of customers rose to approximately EUR 7.7 trillion, a rise of 2.5 percent from the same month last year. The number of international transactions processed by Clearstream stood at 1.5 million for January 2005 compared to 1.7 million for the same month last year. Of these transactions, 15 percent are registered as stock exchange transactions, 85 percent were Over the Counter (OTC) transactions. For domestic settlement transactions in Germany, the figure for the month stood at 2.6 million representing a decrease of 23 percent due to central counterparty efficiencies (January 2004: 3.5 million). The ratio for domestic settlement transactions was 66 percent stock exchange transactions to 34 percent OTC transactions.

Within the Global Securities Financing services business at Clearstream strong growth continued with the monthly average outstandings reaching EUR 140 billion. The combined services include tripartite repo, securities lending and collateral management and collectively experienced a rise of over 29.4 percent from the same month last year (January 2004: EUR 108.2 billion).

In January, Clearstream launched an enhanced version of its investment funds service called Vestima+. The improved investment funds service showed further volume increases with the number of investment funds related instructions processed reaching 165,795 in January 2005, a rise of 24.2 percent from the same month last year (January 2004: 133,464).

Clearstream also experienced growth levels with its CreationOnline real-time information service as customer interactions reached another new record level of 2.24 million during January 2005 benefiting from new functionalities introduced in December 2004. This represents an increase of 14.8 percent from the previous month. The number of registered users of CreationOnline increased last month by 100 to reach a total of 16,491 across 78 countries.