Citco sale to be completed in days

The sale of Cork-based Citco to Clearstream for roughly €50m is expected to be completed over the next couple of days, the Irish Examiner has learned.

The Citco operation in Cork currently employs 300 people who will become employees of Clearstream, which is a subsidiary of Deutsche Borse, the German stock exchange.

Citco currently provides support for over 2,000 funds with net assets in excess of €740bn. Altogether the company employs 1,000 people in Ireland between its Dublin and Cork sites. Clearstream is only acquiring the Cork office.

It is believed that the rationale for the deal is that it will enable Clearstream access to Citco’s information technology infrastructure.

Headquartered in Luxembourg, Clearstream provides the post-trade infrastructure for the Eurobond market and services for securities from 53 domestic markets worldwide.

Clearstream’s customers comprise approximately 2,500 financial institutions in more than 110 countries.

Its services include the issuance, settlement and custody of securities, as well as investment fund services and global securities financing.

With more than €12 trillion in assets under custody, Clearstream is one of the world’s largest settlement and custody firms for domestic and international securities. It opened a funds administration centre in Dublin in 2012, employing 100 people.

Both companies declined to comment.

The Government has put a huge focus on expanding the financial services sector in Ireland.

There had been fears there would be an exodus of foreign-owned financial institutions following the collapse of the economy in 2008.

Even though a number of retail banks have closed their Irish operations over the past few years, there has been an increase in employment numbers among IFSC fund management and services companies.