From Down Under to the Gulf... and a bit of self promotion
Global Custodian
The authoritative editorial voice of the global securities services industry.
Despite being able to fill an entire Friday 5 with BNY news this week, we have opted for a range of stories including big GC announcements, regional coverage from Australia and the Middle East and yet another collateral tokenisation story.
It really is a happy Friday for two of our global custodian banks today as JP Morgan and BNY reported strong Q1 securities services revenues this morning. For the rest of our community, we assume that Friday feeling is entirely derived from receipt of this newsletter, so we have once again picked our five favourite stories from a busy week of news in the asset servicing world.
Before we get into it, two fun facts for this week.
Firstly, we could have had a Friday newsletter solely dedicated to BNY news with five stories from the global custodian in as many days – quite a week for the world’s biggest GC.
Secondly, this newsletter is usually compiled by our head of news, Chris Lemmon , but he’s taken a day off because apparently “it’s his birthday”. So as punishment for his clear lack of commitment, I (Jon) have hijacked this week’s newsletter to begin with for a self-serving, self-promotional note:
Every year this panel delivers a blockbuster line-up and 2025 is no different. This panel discussion takes place before our flagship awards night of the year (though you can still pop along to the panel even if you’re not joining us for the dinner) and tries to touch on all the major talking points across the global securities services landscape in just over an hour. Someone once told me you could just attend this panel once a year and know everything that’s going on in the industry (a tag line I’ve been dining off for a couple of years now) and that’s exactly what we try to achieve.
Joining this year’s discussion is Ryan Cuthbertson , managing director, head of custody services, BNY; Chris Rowland , head of custody, digital, and fund services, State Street; Hannah Elson , head of global custody, JP Morgan; Sam Riley , CEO, Clearstream Securities Services’ and Fiona Neville Pardaeva , managing director, head of securities services Europe, Deutsche Bank. As I said, blockbuster! Sign up by clicking here.
In honour of Chris’s birthday, I’ll pick one of his stories second – a great overview of both the Australian custody space and moves being made by BNP Paribas - Securities Services . From a single country point of view, I would argue there’s not many markets more interesting than Australia – a fiercely competitive provider space with a series of client trends reshaping the entire landscape. Not to mention the exit of two major players in recent years.
Chris spoke with Daniel Cheever GAICD , head of BNP Paribas’ securities services business for Australia and New Zealand, who joined from State Street in September 2022 – right as the landscape entered a new state of flux.
The article looks at BNP Paribas’ growth, as well as the reshuffling of the pack in the Australian market. This will not be the last time we talk about Australian custody in the near future, we can promise you that.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Another big regional trend for custodians is the Middle East – subject of one of our in-depth features in our latest magazine – and this week Sophia T. delivered this exclusive on a partnership struck between Sohar International and BNY to enhance custody and asset services for clients in Oman.
The partnership supports ongoing efforts to develop Oman’s financial infrastructure and capital markets, in line with the objectives of Oman’s Vision 2040, which emphasises economic diversification and financial sector development.
BNY has been one of the most active global custodians in the region of late, making moves in multiple countries. The asset servicer recently appointed Madiha Sattar as managing director and growth ventures partner in the UAE, and in November, also expanded its product and service offerings within the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) after receiving a Category 4 license from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA).
In my decade as editor of Global Custodian I don’t think I’ve ever seen a three-month period with as many collateral project launches. With countless collateral tokenisation and mobility announcements from the big market infrastructure players in recent months, this week it was the turn of Standard Chartered who, alongside digital asset exchange OKX, has launched a collateral mirroring programme aimed at institutional clients, enabling the use of cryptocurrencies and tokenised money market funds as off-exchange collateral for trading.
The pilot is operating within the regulatory framework of Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA).
The structure is designed to address counterparty risk concerns in digital asset markets, while potentially improving capital efficiency through the segregation and secure storage of collateral by a Globally Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB).
Tokenisation is happening. But at what pace? We’ll leave you to opine on that.
A fun note to end on after we were called out (more than once) on our slightly one-sided view on a big move this week. Though we should note this is currently our most-read story.
But, let’s rephrase: GoldenSource , a leading independent provider of enterprise data management and master data management solutions, snapped up industry veteran Marc Mallett this week as its chief commercial officer to spearhead its global growth.
Marc had worked as chief strategy officer at Northern Trust (and contributed a fair few times to GC articles in recent years – thanks Marc), initially joining Northern Trust in 2010 as the global head of client conversions for Northern Trust’s middle-office outsourcing product, before leaving the organisation at the end of 2014.
In his second spell at the asset servicer, he rejoined as director of strategy for Americas asset servicing, before going on to spearhead Northern Trust’s Whole Office strategy – which encompasses its front-to-back-office services.
As they say, one organisation’s “loss” is another’s gain, best of luck in the new role Marc.