Global Link - Press Releases

Press Releases

March 31, 2004 20:14 GMT

State Street Tops Global Finance Magazine’s Foreign Exchange Awards for Fourth Consecutive Year

FX Connect^® Named Best Online Forex Trading System by Leading Industry Publication

Boston, March 29, 2004 - State Street Corporation (NYSE:STT), the world's leading provider of services to institutional investors, announced today that it was awarded Best Online Forex Trading System in the 2004 Global Finance Foreign Exchange Awards. For the fourth year in a row, Global Finance, a key financial trade publication for senior level executives at multinational corporations and financial institutions, named State Street's FX Connect as the top online foreign exchange trading system.

With volumes now reaching 8,000 completed trades per day, of which 93 percent are spot and outright forward transactions, FX Connect is the established leader in the multi-bank foreign exchange trading industry with a market share estimated by several independent experts at up to 70 percent. Clients are now trading with banks in 128 global locations. GTSS, a post-trade confirmation matching and settlement product, is already matching more than 6,000 trades per week, and is also gaining rapid acceptance as the settlements centre of choice.

FX Connect and GTSS are offered via State Street's proprietary Global Link^® network, which delivers unique fact-based research, decision support tools and trading technology for six asset classes to clients in 24 countries worldwide.

Global Finance cited strong growth in trading volumes and advanced transactional processes on the Global Link platform as key factors in the award selection.

According to Global Finance, "FX Connect is able to transact block trades in currency forwards and swaps across an unlimited number of accounts and through multiple counter-parties. Global Link's multi-bank foreign exchange trade-confirmation and settlement product, GTSS II, also has gained market share. Many clients have selected FX Connect for its straight-through processing benefits. State Street's multi-asset-class trade-order management systems are unique among online trading services."

"We were the first to market almost eight years ago in developing an online foreign exchange trading system for institutional investors and then, acting in the best interests of our clients, we pioneered the multi-bank approach. Today we have the largest share of the online FX market and industry-leading security and confidentiality," said Simon Wilson-Taylor, head of Global Link for State Street . "We remain committed to being at the vanguard of industry change and development."

Global Link is currently used by more than 400 asset management companies, including 19 of the world's 20 largest, and offers industry-leading world market research, analytics and secure, real-time trade execution services developed across multiple asset classes, including equities, foreign-exchange and fixed income. More information about Global Link can be found at www.globallink.com.

State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) is the world's leading specialist in providing institutional investors with investment servicing, investment management, research and analytics and trading services. With $9.4 trillion in assets under custody and $1.1 trillion in assets under management, State Street operates in 24 countries and more than 100 markets worldwide. For more information, visit State Street 's Web site at www.statestreet.com .