Crest gets settled in at Exchange

City trading: Automated share settlement system will demolish mountain of paperwork and cut costs

Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, officially launched the Crest automated share settlement system yesterday, which will remove mountains of paper from institutional back offices.

Also present were Howard Davies, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and Pen Kent, chairman of CrestCo. The Crest system, developed by the Bank over the past three years and owned by 69 financial institutions, began operations at 4am.

Crest's annual running costs of pounds 35m are roughly half those of Talisman, the paper-based system. The Government asked the Bank to develop Crest after the Stock Exchange's own project, Taurus, failed at a cost to the City of around pounds 400m.