Northern Trust claims to be the first custodian to have settled a live market custodial foreign exchange deal within the risk-reducing Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) environment.
The milestone trade settled on time on the morning of 13 February, 2004, and was on behalf of a London based investment manager.
"For the first time, this development offers investment managers and clients the opportunity to see their foreign exchange transactions complete in a settlement risk free environment," says Sean O'Donovan, vice president and manager of foreign exchange and cash management operations at Northern Trust in London. "This milestone will hopefully provide the impetus for other investment managers to embrace CLS as their preferred mechanism for foreign exchange settlement."
A custody foreign exchange deal involves an investment manager, a counterparty and a custodian and is a more complicated transaction in terms of settlement than the interbank deals that have settled in CLS to date.