Unified for New Opportunities: Wave 2 market activation for German ADRs

Clearstream Europe AG¹ informs clients about upcoming changes affecting a group of German ADRs currently being under the custody type collective safe custody (CSC). A total of 16 ISINs require a specific transition path due to their classification for settlement via CEU accounts, which will only be fully supported from November 2026 onward.

To ensure continuity of settlement and custody services during this interim phase, the custody type will temporarily change from CSC to non-collective safe custody (NCSC) for the period from June to November, until the underlying technical constraint is resolved. Clients should note that all German ADRs currently being NCSC will remain under that custody type until November 2026 as well.

To ensure operational stability and compliance, CEU will apply a separate migration approach for these German ADRs, independent of Wave 2 (U.S., Canada and Switzerland).

Migration approach and timeline

a. Transition from custody type CSC to NCSC planned on 18 May 2026:

• CEU will convert the affected German ADRs from CSC to NCSC on record date 18 May 2026, on a 1:1 basis, in the same ISIN.
• The static data will be aligned and updated by WM Datenservice to reflect the custody type changes.
  This step is required to prepare the instruments for subsequent processing.
• Pending stock exchange settlement instructions will be cancelled and re-instructed on the 6-series accounts of the clients by CEU.
• Eurex Clearing instructions will be cancelled and re-instructed on the 6-series accounts of the clients by Eurex Clearing².
• Pending OTC settlement instructions will be cancelled and have to be re-instructed by the clients on the 6-series accounts.
• The corresponding client holdings will be automatically transferred by CEU from CEU accounts to clients’ 6‑series accounts.

b. Transition from custody type NCSC to NCSC-T:

• A second migration step will follow later in the year. The NCSC to NCSC-T conversion is planned for the November release in 2026. Clients should note that the exact date for the custody type change from NCSC to NCSC‑T has not yet been finalised. CEU will share further information with clients once the timeline is confirmed.
• The same procedure applied during previous Unified for New Opportunities market activation waves will also apply here. This means that, where necessary, clients will need to initiate transfers of holdings to the respective accounts.

General impact

With the transfer from CEU accounts to clients’ 6-series accounts, CEU emphasises that following the migration, it will conduct tax processing for the relevant German ADRs within the interim period according to the existing tax rules for Clearstream Banking S.A. (CBL) instead of current CEU processes.

This will lead especially to a change in the information flow, as follows:

To ensure that the German withholding tax obligations are fulfilled after the Unified for New Opportunities migration, CEU’s Swift messages (MT564 and MT566) regarding distributions of German ADRs will include the following information:

• “GRSS”: The distribution at issuer level minus the “initial taxation”;
• “TAXR”: The “initial taxation” including the Solidarity Surcharge.

While this information flow has already been implemented with CEU, it may lead to amended information flows for CBL clients. The taxation process on CBL will remain unchanged.

Impacted securities

Further information

For further questions, please contact UNO@clearstream.com.

------------------------------------------

1. This Announcement is published by Clearstream Europe AG (CEU), registered office at Mergenthalerallee 61, 65760 Eschborn, Germany, registered with the Commercial Register of the District Court in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, under number HRB 7500.

2. The only impacted ISIN cleared by Eurex Clearing is BioNTech SE, ISIN US09075V1026.