Certificate-less Registry for Electronic Share Transfer (CREST) is the United Kingdom’s securities settlement system for the holding and transfer of securities. An embedded payment system supports a delivery-versus-payment (DVP) settlement service for transactions in UK, Irish, Manx and Channel Islands securities. CREST also has links to settlement systems outside the United Kingdom to allow transactions in foreign securities to be settled in CREST.
CREST has been operated since 2002 by Euroclear UK & Ireland (EUI), a fully-owned subsidiary of Euroclear SA.
The United Kingdom has four recognised clearing houses (RCH). These are:
London Clearing House (LCH)
LCH.Clearnet Ltd is the main UK central clearing counter-party (CCP), which clears for a range of equities, fixed income, derivative and commodity markets. LCH is part of the LCH.Clearnet Group, based in Paris.
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Clear Europe
ICE Clear Europe Ltd acts as a CCP providing clearing services for all trades on ICE Futures Europe, all cleared OTC contracts executed in ICE’s global OTC markets and a range of European credit default swap (CDS) products. These contracts include oil, gas, coal and electricity futures and options.
EuroCCP
A wholly owned subsidiary of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). EuroCCP clears equity trades in 19 European markets. It began operations in August 2008.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Clearing Europe
Newly established, this is a wholly owned subsidiary of CME Group Inc. that provides clearing services for OTC trading of energy derivatives, interest rate swaps, CDS and foreign exchange.