BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole have created a joint subsidiary, Euro Securities Partners, to operate and develop a combined IT platform for securities custody in retail and private banking.
The joint subsidiary has a share capital of EUR3 million, held equally by the two founders, and will staff 150 employees recruited from BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole. Each bank will have five seats on the ten-member board of directors.
Euro Securities Partners will be responsible for strategic project management, IT project leadership, IT operations management and back-office user support for the two banks. The two banks anticipate the move will boost performance and rationalise costs for their respective securities custody business. The joint platform will process 6.5 million accounts with a combined value in safekeeping of EUR460 billion.
The new subsidiary has begun operations for Credit Agricole's custody business and will be fully operational for BNP Paribas once the migrations scheduled for 2004 are complete.