First, a quick history lesson. When BlackRock decided to move USD1trn of common trust fund assets from State Street to J.P. Morgan, the bank said it expected to onboard the assets “over the next two years”. That never happened. In fact, it took over three years to finish the project. Transitions are complicated, and J.P.…
Category: Analysis
HI HO SILVER LINING: Asset values may have dropped off a cliff, but inserv administrators see opportunities in the midst of the pandemic
The trust banks enjoyed the first quarter of 2020. FX earnings were up across the board as volatility returned. After a generally undistinguished 2019, the banks bounced back in Q1 2020. But how is the rest of the year going to play out? When your social and business lives are conducted through Zoom, Teams, FaceTime…
RUNNING ON THE SPOT – InServ providers need to make more money. Gathering assets is not the answer.
3 April 2020: Here’s an interesting fact. At the end of 2015, J.P. Morgan’s securities services business reported Q4 revenues of USD933m, and AuC of USD19.9trn. At the end of 2019, the same business reported AuC of USD26.8trn, and Q4 revenues of USD1.1bn. In case you are too weary from quarantine or lockdown or Netflix…
BACK FROM THE BRINK: RBC’s investor services business has been to the existential edge. Now Francis Jackson is trying to pull it back
19 December 2019: This is no time to beat around the bush. RBC’s investor services business has had a horrible 2019. Much as I admire the management team, it has not distinguished itself over the last twelve months. It ended its fiscal year with a kitchen-sink charge that will cover repositioning (primarily the exit from…
YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET Scharf was only BNY Mellon’s CEO for two years – but he left his mark on the firm.
9 October 2019: Nothing sums up the transformation that Charlie Scharf started at BNY Mellon better than a scathing indictment of the bank’s previous digital strategy from Roman Regelman, hired by Scharf in 2018 to spearhead the digital drive. Regelman said in September: “I’ve seen banks that tout what I call the Silicon Valley model.…
Walk This Way – the legacy of Harry Samuel at RBC I&TS
24 July 2019: It is seven years since RBC paid around USD1bn to unwind itself from the investor services joint venture with Dexia that it struck in 2005. Business schools could probably put together a very entertaining case study about the RBC Dexia deal, and the many teachable moments that it yielded. For us, however,…
I Hear You Knocking – a new breed of administrators is on the march
Most likely, you didn’t know much about Intertrust before Stephanie Miller was appointed CEO in 2018. Perhaps you, like me, thought of the firm as a rather dull provider of corporate services, with a small administration business tacked on. Think again. With the USD330m acquisition of Viteos, Intertrust just joined the major leagues. Intertrust describes…