The European wholesale securities market is slowly professionalising through consolidation. KAS BANK is well positioned to play a prominent role on the European level, since its systems and business models have been geared towards Europe since the end of the last century.
A virtual single European capital market for securities
Our core client groups, institutional investors and financial institutions, demand an international service and they rely heavily on our ability to support them with innovative products and services. KAS BANK is unique in managing its clearing and settlement platform on a truly European basis, thus offering a single risk management including combined collateral and margining facilities and seamless access to cash markets, derivatives markets and multi trading facilities. In fact, we have created a virtual single European capital market for securities.
Solid growth in and outside Europe
In order to be able to fulfill the needs of our clients we extend our network continuously, also outside Europe. In 2007, we have linked 20 major American exchanges to our network. This year we expect further expansion in Asia. In February 2008 we started by connecting the Hong Kong stock exchange to our clearing and settlement platform. By combining these regions we are able to extend our risk management and cash management skills (including margining and collateral management) to additional time zones, thus lowering the cost of doing business for our clients. It will only be a matter of time before various areas of Asia will be linked into our network.
The fundament for our European expansion lies in a strong position in our home markets in the Benelux countries, in the UK and in Germany, where we opened our offices this year.
Read more on our strategy in the Annual Report.