BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, France's two leading banking groups, today announced the formation of a joint subsidiary, Euro Securities Partners. The new company will operate and develop the two banks' joint IT platform for securities custody in retail and private banking.
Euro Securities Partners is incorporated with share capital of three million euro, held equally by the two founders. All its 150 employees have been recruited from BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, which each have five seats on the ten-member Board of Directors.
Euro Securities Partners will take responsibility for strategic project management, IT project leadership, IT operations management and back-office user support for the two banks. The new subsidiary already performs these functions for Crédit Agricole's custody business and will be fully operational for BNP Paribas once the migrations scheduled for 2004 are complete.
The deal will permit BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole to boost performance, rationalise costs and be more demand-responsive. The two partners have thus passed a crucial milestone in terms of customer service quality in retail and private banking in France.
With 6.5 million securities accounts and over 460 billion euro in safekeeping on the joint platform, the two partners together will easily surpass the critical mass needed for this business. They will be positioned for a new and ambitious round of investment in the Europe-wide expansion of securities custody.
Euro Securities Partners is incorporated with share capital of three million euro, held equally by the two founders. All its 150 employees have been recruited from BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, which each have five seats on the ten-member Board of Directors.
Euro Securities Partners will take responsibility for strategic project management, IT project leadership, IT operations management and back-office user support for the two banks. The new subsidiary already performs these functions for Crédit Agricole's custody business and will be fully operational for BNP Paribas once the migrations scheduled for 2004 are complete.
The deal will permit BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole to boost performance, rationalise costs and be more demand-responsive. The two partners have thus passed a crucial milestone in terms of customer service quality in retail and private banking in France.
With 6.5 million securities accounts and over 460 billion euro in safekeeping on the joint platform, the two partners together will easily surpass the critical mass needed for this business. They will be positioned for a new and ambitious round of investment in the Europe-wide expansion of securities custody.