Somewhat superficial
Books about the technical and legal details of security back office activities are scarce. If you are not working in the back office it is not easy to get a grip on the procedures between banks and custodians.
This book tells us about it and wants to keep a truly
international perspective. As such it explains the general procedures in the clearing, settlement and custody…mehrSomewhat superficial
Books about the technical and legal details of security back office activities are scarce. If you are not working in the back office it is not easy to get a grip on the procedures between banks and custodians.
This book tells us about it and wants to keep a truly international perspective. As such it explains the general procedures in the clearing, settlement and custody (CS&C) of different kinds of securities in a qualitative way. How things are usually get done and in what areas are the most important pitfalls.
Avoiding to give deeper explanations to the reader that may not be applicable globally, he does not explain them. The major areas are:
- legal questions: One might be interested what kinds of contracts and legal documents are used during the process. Instead of that he advises to take into account the local jurisdictions. That may be right, but it might have been useful to explain how it works out e.g. in the UK, and then mentioning major differences to the situation on the continent or overseas.
- The same applies to technical issues. Of course, no clearing system is exactly like the other, but I missed a thorough discussion of at least one complete CS&C process, say, of a standard stock trade. A brief general description of SWIFT messaging between the participants would have been useful.
Instead, some general explanations, for example about the nature of corporate actions, cover facts of which one could assume that they are known to anyone buying a book about such a special interest topic as CS&C.
So I do not really know for whom this book was written. I would guess, for traders and junior asset managers who want to know what's happening after they push the "TRADE" button.
One of the strongest points of the book is a 50-page glossary explaining a wide variety of security-related terms.
Other strong points of the book could have been the appendices and the excercises which are referred to in the text. But there are no appendices in the book. And no excercises. And no link to a website where one could find them. This is really annoying, so that I cannot give a better mark than two stars for the book.
