Clearstream completes 2004 with strong growth in core businesses

Double digit growth seen in all new business areas

Clearstream experienced strong growth throughout 2004 in all of its main business areas. The value of assets held in custody on behalf of customers rose to approximately EUR 7.6 trillion, a rise of 3.5 percent from the end of 2003. The number of international transactions processed by Clearstream rose to 17.2 million across 2004, an increase of 4.2 percent year on year. 17 percent of these transactions are registered as stock exchange transactions, 83 percent as Over the Counter (OTC) transactions.

Efficiency gains made possible by the introduction of the equity central counterparty in March 2003 continues to impact domestic settlement transactions in Germany. Due to the successful introduction of the equity central counterparty in 2003, the number for domestic transactions decreased as expected by 27.6 percent from 45.3 million in 2003 to 32.8 million in 2004 with a ratio of 65 percent stock exchange transactions to 35 percent OTC transactions.

Within the Global Securities Financing services business at Clearstream strong growth continues to develop. The combined services include tripartite repo, securities lending and collateral management and for December 2004 the average of collateral under management amounted to EUR 136.4 billion representing a rise of 22.7 percent from the 2003 end of year figure of EUR 111.2 billion.

Clearstream’s investment funds service showed continued volume increases with the number of investment funds related instructions processed reaching an annual total of 1.63 million for 2004, a rise of 31.4 percent from the previous year (2003: 1.24 million). The figure for December 2004 alone of 167,390 instructions represented an increase of 11.2 percent above the previous month (Nov. 2004: 149,822). On Monday 24 January 2005, Clearstream will launch an enhanced version of its investment funds service called Vestima+.

Clearstream also experienced record growth levels with its CreationOnline real-time information service as customer interactions reached another new record level of 1.95 million interactions during December 2004, representing an increase of 10.8 percent from the previous month. The number of registered users of CreationOnline increased last month by 606 to reach a total of 16,391 across 78 countries. User numbers are more than 2.5 times higher than at the end of 2003.

Yolande Theis and Graham Cope will be happy to answer questions from the news desks: phone +352 2433 1500.