CorpActions Day 2010 held in London
SWIFT Asset Servicing delivers successful conference
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Commenting on the event, Sophie Bertin, Head of Asset Servicing and Custodians at SWIFT, said: “We were delighted with this level of attendance considering the international flight restrictions in place at the time. It was impressive that so many of our staff and customers managed to get to London for the event.” The conference included sessions on corporate actions, proxy voting, and securities reference data. An update was given by David Hands of DTCC and SWIFT’s Max Mansur on the Issuer-to-Investor: Corporate Actions initiative sponsored by DTCC, SWIFT and XBRL US to engage issuers in the corporate actions process. This was followed by a panel to debate whether an XBRL based approach would work in Europe.
Finding common ground
A common theme of the day was that standardising processes would bring significant improvements to corporate actions processing although harmonisation was thought to be difficult to achieve. On the responsibility for making change happen, the conference chairman, Dean Hogan, Executive Director, and Transaction Processing Head at J.P. Morgan Chase Bank N.A., said of the corporate actions industry “Bottom line is that it is “us”. We need to figure out how to action it.” Panellists also agreed that what works well in the US may not suit the corporate actions landscape in Europe and vice versa. A stimulating discussion that clearly engaged both the audience and the panelists was about the applicability of XBRL and whether it was applicable in Europe. While there was debate, there was unity that data from the issuers or their agents is essential. Michael Kempe of Capita, a UK registrar, advocated vigorously that the three registrars (Capita, Equiniti, and Computershare) representing nearly all listed companies in UK and Ireland are already providing data directly to the CSD and will use ISO 20022 Issuer Agent messages with Euroclear’s single platform beginning next year.
It was also recognised that issuers are clearly an integral part of the corporate actions process but are often disengaged from moves towards industry change. More adoption of standardisation would lower their costs and increase their involvement in the corporate actions process.
“Issuers want to put standards in place”, said Michael Kempe, Chief Development Officer, Capita Registrars. “Let’s not kick the issuers, let’s take a global approach.” This theme was reinforced by Dr Markus Kaum of Munich Re, a panellist in absentia, grounded by the ash cloud. In an email read to the audience he said, as a representative of the issuers: “We are available for providing the “golden copy” for all corporate action information but see this in a more global context for improving communication between investors and issuers.”
The discussions also covered what the industry needs to do to accelerate the implementation of a process for proxy voting. Engaging issuers is important to make the process more transparent, pressure from institutional investors for confirmation of vote and results will be essential, and the panellists suggested a hard deadline for adoption of ISO 20022. But buy-in across all stakeholders is truly the key to overcome the burdens and risk, and to begin to achieve some consistency from market to market. As an example, the panellists noted that some markets still publish announcements in newspapers and vote by a show of hands!
“Streamlining corporate actions processing has gone from being a nice-to-have to being a must-have. Tolerance for risk of any kind has evaporated and in the financial services world activities don’t come much riskier than corporate actions processing.” commented Sophie Bertin, Head of Asset Servicing and Custodians, SWIFT.
If you would like to see the video highlights from the conference, please visit the Capital Markets Events website.
For more information about our Corporate Actions Day events, please contact Karin de Ridder or Max Mansur.