Link Up Markets, the joint venture between eight European central securities depositories (CSDs), has announced the successful launch of its operations on 30 March.
The venture is designed to facilitate links between CSDs to improve efficiency and reduce costs of cross-border securities settlement in Europe.
Four national CSDs – Clearstream Banking Frankfurt (Germany), OeKB (Austria), SIX SIS (Switzerland) and VP (Denmark) established connections upon launch. Hellenic Exchanges (Greece) and Iberclear (Spain) will connect in June, followed by the Cyprus Stock Exchange (Cypus) and VPS (Norway) in Q4.
By connecting to the Link Up Markets infrastructure, each participating CSD will be able to access the services of the other linked CSDs. According to Link Up Markets, the eight CSDs involved settle 50% of European securities transactions and will significantly reduce the gap between domestic and cross-border costs for transactions.
“As promised, Link Up Markets successfully launched on time, only 12 months after the announcement of the joint venture,” said Tomas Kindler, managing director of the venture, in a statement. “This achievement underpins our key principle that leveraging existing solutions whenever possible will deliver efficiencies and cost-benefits for the European securities market within the shortest timeframe.”