“Innovate, integrate and mobilise” at the GFF Summit in Luxembourg
The 23rd edition of Deutsche Börse Group’s Global Funding and Financing Summit took place from 29 to 31 January 2019 at the European Convention Center in Luxembourg under the slogan “Innovate, integrate and mobilise”. Deutsche Börse Group was represented by all relevant segments, covering the entire lifecycle of collateral management within securities financing: Clearstream, Eurex Clearing and Eurex Repo, together with “new technology” experts from Deutsche Börse AG.
Prior to the event, speakers and panellists gave a sneak preview of the topics of this year’s Summit: non-cleared margin requirements, high-quality liquid assets (HQLAs), regulation and the potential of new technologies for the securities financing industry. Dive into our “GFF Summit 2019 light”!
Watch the video featuring:
- Frank Gast (Head of Funding & Financing Sales at Eurex)
- François Masquelier (Chairman GFF Summit 2019, Head of Treasury and Enterprise Risk Management, RTL Group and Chairman of Luxembourg Association for Corporate Treasurers)
- Nicolas Mackel (CEO Luxembourg for Finance, keynote speaker GFF Summit 2019)
- Banu Apers (Head of Product Management – Collateral Management at Clearstream)
- Philippe Seyll (CEO Clearstream Banking S.A.)
- Jens Hachmeister (Head of DLT, Crypto Assets and New Market Structures at Deutsche Börse)
The GFF Summit is recognised globally as one of the major international events in the secured funding and securities financing industry. This was proved right once again this year: over 760 specialists, industry experts, buy-side clients and regulators as well as industry-leading companies and organisations from 30 countries gathered to discuss the transformational journey to a digital economy and the latest market innovations.
The event was marked by a variety of panels, speeches and workshops. To name a few: Erik Müller, CEO of Eurex Clearing AG, spoke about the role of CCPs in evolving market structures, REGIS-TR offered a workshop on SFTR, and Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board at the European Central Bank, joined the ICMA European Repo and Collateral Council’s session as keynote speaker.
Polls conducted during panel sessions provided insights into the participants’ views, e.g on new technologies. 89 per cent of respondents indicated that new technology was part of their strategic agenda. However, only 11 per cent said that their main new technology initiative was already fully implemented.
Stephan Leithner, member of Deutsche Börse’s Executive Board and responsible for the Post-Trading, Data & Index division, emphasised in his welcome remarks to the last day of the Summit: “We’ve seen a bumpy start to 2019: Brexit, the US government closure and tensions in international trade relations, as well as signs of economic slowdown and at-risk central bank normalisation. All these developments make it more urgent for us to advance our agenda for stronger European markets. Innovation, integration and mobilisation will ensure efficient and well-functioning markets, also in times of turmoil.”
Tilman Fechter, Head of Banking, Funding & Financing at Clearstream and host of the GFF Summit, also summed up the conference themes: “We need to innovate and rethink the current business models to offer our customers robust and future-proof solutions that help them be compliant with relevant regulations. We need to integrate new solutions into the existing environment and ensure interoperability between different markets and systems. Like that, we help to mobilise and overcome problems of legacy systems. New technologies like blockchain are great enablers for these goals.”
And how did our customers like the GFF Summit 2019?
“This conference maintains a level of independence which encourages all market participants to take part. It is a unique event and not just a ‘sell’ conference. It independently benefits the market.”
Paul Pirie
J.P. Morgan, Luxembourg
“I think the conference delivered well this year. It seems it’s well attended as always with a strong mix of buy-side and sell-side.”
Johanna Wikstedt
MTS – Capital Markets, LSEG, London
“Excellent event, well organised and a good networking environment”
Rodney Jordan
HQLAx, Luxembourg