CREST

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CREST (which although an acronym, does not stand for anything) is the Central Securities Depository for the U.K., Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man and Jersey equities and UK gilts. It operates a settlement system, allowing trades that have been agreed to be settled.

It allows shareholders and bondholders to hold assets in a dematerialised, i.e. electronic, form, rather than holding physical share certificates. CREST also serves a number of other important functions, such as assisting in the payments of dividends to shareholders.

CREST is also an "Electronic Trade Confirmation System" ("ETC") (using TRAX). When parties to a transaction make a deal, they both electronically confirm their sides of the transaction via file transfer. Both parties are required to submit confirmation details to CREST. In the event that transaction details do not match, CREST will highlight the issues and ensure that the problems are resolved as soon as is practicable.

Given that stamp duty is only sufferable on physical share certificates, there is no stamp duty payable on shares settled via CREST. There is, however, stamp duty reserve tax. This is collected by CREST on behalf of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

CREST was acquired by Euroclear in September 2002.

[edit] CREST Members

There are two classes of members on CREST: members and sponsored members. Members are usually pension funds, inter dealer brokers or other large financial institutions with significant resources. Sponsored members have the same rights and responsibilities as members. However, given that they do not have the financial or technical resources of the full members they rely on their sponsoring member to interface with CREST.