A New Division Created within Strate

Strate has created a new division that will incorporate the company’s current Project and Innovation Management Office (PIMO), Human Resources and Corporate Affairs (which includes International Relations, Marketing, Public Relations, Strategy and Transformation) Divisions.

 

It has appointed Tanya Knowles as the head of this newly formed division, to be called Project Innovation and Business Services.

 

“With almost 15 years of experience within Strate, Tanya brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. She is a true asset to Strate and I wish her all the success in her new role,” says Monica Singer, CEO of Strate. Singer has also announced the departure of two Divisional Heads, who have sought other career opportunities. “We regret to see the departure of Lulama Gumede, Strate’s Head of Human Resources, as well as Louis Rushin, the current head of PIMO.”

 

While Gumede is set to pursue local opportunities, Rushin will be leaving Strate and South Africa at the end of December 2014 to work at the Canadian CSD, CDS Clearing and Depository Services Inc.

 

“We wish them both all the best,” concludes Singer.

 

 

Celebrating a Decade of Being One of South Africa’s Best Companies To Work For

Strate has celebrated its tenth year of participating in the Deloitte Best Company To Work For Survey, a competition in which it has always excelled, consistently achieving top results and acknowledged as one of the Standard of Excellence Achievers.

 

During 2013, it was voted second in the survey’s small company size category for both South Africa as well as the southern African region.

 

Monica Singer says that employee satisfaction drives a high performance culture and sustainable results. “Strate’s staff enjoy coming to work every day where we drive a family culture with strong business values and ethics. It motivates everyone to work together to serve the financial markets and we enjoy what we do.”

 

The Deloitte Best Company To Work For survey has become widely recognised as a great insight into the overall employment experience of employees in participating companies. The survey uses an empirically researched and validated process, giving companies a unique opportunity to understand how they perform in terms of employees’ needs and expectations.

 

Singer says that there has been a culture created within Strate that looks at personal growth and development, encouraging staff to do more and be great by learning and studying further. “While Strate has approximately 120 employees, we’re certainly a family that come together each day to look at how we can give something back to the market through our services, to our clients through our relationships and to our communities, through our initiatives,” adds Singer.

 

The Best Company To Work For survey has been conducted annually by Deloitte since 2000. It identifies and celebrates companies across southern Africa that have been rated by their employees. In this survey, Strate was rated on a number of dimensions, such as job satisfaction, management style, leadership, values and culture, training and development, HR policies and procedures, change management, diversity and transformation, performance management, recognition, reward and innovation.

 

In the 2013 Survey, The Unlimited was ranked first while The MSA Group was third within the Small Company Size Category for both South Africa as well as the Southern African region.

 

Strate congratulates all winners and participants that took place in the survey.

 

SCS Charity Spotlight: In Support of the Welfare of our Nation’s Children

Nelson Mandela once said, “Together as a nation, we have the obligation to put sunshine into the hearts of our little ones. They are our precious possessions. They deserve what happiness life can offer.”
Child Welfare’s vision is in line with Mandela’s, aiming to provide safe home environments to children and protect children to ensure that they have the opportunity to reach their full potential. It builds communities where all children live with a loving adult caregiver in a family home with easy access to food, health-care, education, recreation, and emotional support. SCS too is playing its part in helping Child Welfare Tshwane achieve its goals, as it is one of SCS’ beneficiaries.
Through investor’s donations of small or large amounts of their shares to SCS, they are helping children across the country. The funds from donors and sponsors help Child Welfare Tshwane – which belongs to one of the largest non-profit and non-governmental organisations in the country – help it drive a number of programmes.
Such programmes include, but are not limited to, child protection, adoption, bereavement groups and foster parents support groups.

 

According to Tanya Knowles, Strate’s Head of Corporate Affairs and a Board Member of SCS, investors can change the lives of many individuals who are in desperate need. “As investors and business people, we’re often met with the growing demands of life in general. While it is in our hearts to help those in need, some people wish that they could do more. SCS is such an easy and convenient way to do just that for charities across the country. There is also the added bonus to investors of ridding their portfolio of those nuisance odd lot shares and getting a tax benefit for the donation to SCS, which goes a long way to helping uplift communities and supporting charities, such as Child Welfare Tshwane.”
Some of the other charities to have benefited from SCS include the Salvation Army, the African Children’s Feeding Scheme, Hospice, the Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund SA.

South Africa’s Financial Institutions Explore Collateral Optimisation

Strate, Africa’s leading Central Securities Depository (CSD), and Clearstream, the International CSD (ICSD) and national CSD that is part of the Deutsche Börse Group, have announced the launch of a centralised collateral management service for the South African financial market. Some of South Africa’s largest financial institutions*, including banks, a number of fund managers and the JSE, have committed to exploring the use of these services to more efficiently manage collateral and to mitigate operational and credit risk within the South African market.

 

The introduction of new international regulations, such as Basel III and Solvency II, which aim to protect the financial markets from systemic risk, will place pressure on the availability and funding costs associated with holding high-quality liquid assets (HQLA). In addition, the G-20 Finance Ministers have also recommended that all standardised ‘over-the-counter’ (OTC) derivatives should be cleared with central counterparties (CCPs). This move will require initial margin – which has traditionally been in the form of cash, but may be expanded to include HQLA – to be placed with the CCPs. Non-cleared OTC derivatives will also have to be collateralised.

Such regulations are set to affect the South African market as financial institutions will need to hold greater regulatory and solvency capital with increased requirements for unencumbered HQLA. The cumulative effect of each of these changes, the need for greater transparency as well as the specific South African regulatory and legislative obligations stated in the Financial Markets Act and Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act, point to a re-think of collateralisation in the industry.

As a result, South Africa’s financial institutions, together with Strate, have formed a Collateral Management Industry Forum with a view to explore the optimisation of collateral in the local market via Strate’s Collateral Management Service. The service was initially developed by Clearstream who have offered this collateral management service on an outsourced basis to market infrastructures, like CSDs, outside Europe’s borders since 2011. Along with South Africa, Brazil and Australia have been other non-European frontrunners in this initiative.

Despite cash being a common form of collateral, many financial institutions in South Africa are investigating the use of securities (equities, bonds and money market instruments) in order to meet their regulatory obligations. The use of securities as collateral does, however, introduce certain complexities and the market is looking at Strate’s service to more efficiently and automatically manage their collateral.

Strate’s Strategic Projects Director, Anthony van Eden, explains that there has been an overwhelming interest from the local market for the use of the service. “We are also in discussion with a number of other financial institutions, in addition to the ones named above, who are seeing the benefit of this industry-wide initiative and exploring the use of the service.”

Market-wide collateral optimisation is, to a large degree, a panacea for collateral fragmentation, scarcity and shortages, which the service looks to overcome. Stefan Lepp, Head of Global Securities Financing and Member of the Executive Board of Clearstream, says, “We are delighted that we have partnered with Strate in South Africa to assist financial institutions in managing their domestic collateral more efficiently.”

Lepp explains that it is a strategic priority of Deutsche Börse Group to make global markets more robust through risk and liquidity management solutions such as Clearstream’s collateral management outsourcing service. “Collateral has become a very scarce resource and sourcing good quality collateral is increasingly expensive. The service looks to manage collateral holdings and exposures much more efficiently to provide markets with access to much needed liquidity.”

As part of its risk and liquidity management offering, Clearstream has developed a collateral management outsourcing solution allowing its market infrastructure partners like Strate to manage the collateral of their underlying client base. The assets never leave the domestic environment and remain under local jurisdiction; hence contractual agreements between the partner (Strate) and its domestic client base remain unchanged. The initiative has gained momentum, as upcoming regulatory changes require financial and non-financial institutions to improve their capital management.

Clearstream is the only collateral management services provider with a proven ability to manage collateral across time zones without transferring assets out of the respective domestic environment. The collateral management outsourcing service went live with Brazilian CSD Cetip in July 2011, with the ASX Group, Australia, in August 2013, with Spanish CSD Iberclear and Strate in November 2013. SGX, Singapore, has signed a Letter of Intent with Clearstream and Clearstream and Canadian CDS have announced that they are working together towards a collateral management solution for the Canadian market.

*The financial institutions who have committed to exploring the collateral management solution and joined the Collateral Management Industry Forum include Absa Bank Limited (through their Absa Capital division), FirstRand Bank Limited (through their Rand Merchant Bank division), The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, JSE Limited, Coronation Fund Managers, Maitland Group South Africa Limited and Prescient Investment Management (Pty) Limited.
 

 

 

A Tribute to Nelson Mandela

On this day of mourning for not only the people of South Africa, but for people around the world, Strate would like to pay tribute to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. As the father of South Africa’s Rainbow Nation, who successfully led a peaceful transition to democracy in our country, Strate and its staff are deeply saddened by the loss of this great man.

 

Strate would like to thank our international colleagues for their tributes and well wishes at this time. We are blessed to have been part of South Africa’s history under such an iconic man and leader. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mandela family and the people of South Africa.

 

About Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xo’li:lala man’de:la]; born 18 July 1918) served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

 

Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life in prison. Mandela served 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island.

 

Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to multi-racial democracy in 1994. As president from 1994 to 1999, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation.

 

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father) Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Negotiations
Following his release from prison, Mandela returned to the leadership of the ANC and, between 1990 and 1994, led the party in the multiparty negotiations that led to the country’s first multi-racial elections.
In 1991, the ANC held its first national conference in South Africa after its unbanning, electing Mandela as President of the organisation. His old friend and colleague Oliver Tambo, who had led the organisation in exile during Mandela’s imprisonment, became National Chairperson.
Mandela’s leadership through the negotiations, as well as his relationship with President F. W. de Klerk, was recognised when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

 

Presidency of South Africa
South Africa’s first multi-racial elections in which full enfranchisement was granted was held on 27 April 1994. The ANC won 62% of the votes in the election, and Mandela, as leader of the ANC, was inaugurated on 10 May 1994 as the country’s first black President, with the National Party’s de Klerk as his first deputy and Thabo Mbeki as the second in the Government of National Unity. As President from May 1994 until June 1999, Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.

 

After assuming the presidency, one of Mandela’s trademarks was his use of Batik shirts, known as “Madiba shirts”, even on formal occasions.

 

Retirement

Mandela became the oldest elected President of South Africa when he took office at the age of 75 in 1994. He decided not to stand for a second term and retired in 1999, to be succeeded by Thabo Mbeki.

 

After his retirement as President, Mandela went on to become an advocate for a variety of social and human rights organisations including the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation.
According to an article in Newsweek magazine, “Mandela rightly occupies an untouched place in the South African imagination. He’s the national liberator, the saviour, its Washington and Lincoln rolled into one”.
In November 2009, the United Nations General Assembly announced that Mandela’s birthday, 18 July, is to be known as “Mandela Day” to mark his contribution to world freedom. Mandela did a lot of work for humanity and will always be remembered as a good man who advocated peace, reconciliation and love for our fellow man.

 

Orders and Decorations
Main article: List of Nelson Mandela awards and honours Mandela has received many South African, foreign and international honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 (which was shared with Frederik Willem de Klerk), the Order of Merit from, and creation as a Baliff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John by, Queen Elizabeth II and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush.

 

In July 2004, the city of Johannesburg bestowed its highest honour on Mandela by granting him the freedom of the city at a ceremony in Orlando, Soweto.

 

As an example of his popular foreign acclaim, during his tour of Canada in 1998, 45,000 school children greeted him with adulation at a speaking engagement in the SkyDome in the city of Toronto.

 

In 2001, he was the first living person to be made an honorary Canadian citizen (the only previous recipient, Raoul Wallenberg, was awarded honorary citizenship posthumously). While in Canada, he was also made an honorary Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the few foreigners to receive
the honour.

 

In 1990 he received the Bharat Ratna Award from the government of India and also received the last ever Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. In 1992 he was awarded the Atatürk Peace Award by Turkey. He refused the award citing human rights violations committed by Turkey at the time, but later accepted the award in 1999. In 1992 he received of Nishan-e-Pakistan, the highest civil service award of Pakistan.

 

Published Biographies
Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994, an extended version of No Easy Walk to Freedom, published by Heinemann in 1965. Mandela had begun work on it secretly while in prison. In that book Mandela did not reveal anything about the alleged complicity of F. W. de Klerk in the violence of the eighties and nineties, or the role of his ex-wife Winnie Mandela in that bloodshed. However, he later co-operated with his friend, journalist Anthony Sampson who discussed those issues in Mandela: The Authorised Biography.

 

Mandela Day
Mandela Day on 18 July is an annual international day adopted by the United Nations. Individuals, communities and organisations are asked to donate 67 minutes to doing something for others, commemorating the 67 years that Nelson Mandela gave to the struggle for social justice.

 

Lala ngoxolo Madiba

 

18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013

Gone, but never forgotten

 

South Africa’s Financial Market Proving to Enhance Investor Confidence

South Africa has maintained its financial market development rank of 3rd out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, scoring 5.8 out of 7 points. A year ago, it was ranked 3rd of 144 countries in the report …

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Collateral Management Conference 2013

Strate’s Collateral Management Project is on track to be implemented with Clearstream on 16-18 November 2013. The Clearstream technology, through sophisticated algorithms, automatically manages bilateral eligibility criteria for collateral, allocates the cheapest securities to deliver against open exposures and thus provides regular intra-day collateral optimisation, where possible. In addition, collateral top-ups and returns, cash margin calls, automatic substitutions as well as tracking of collateral placed and received are stand-out features of this world class solution for the South African market.

 

Strate is presenting a number of market workshops to continue educating stakeholders about Strate Collateral Management Services and its benefits. These benefits include meeting the growing need for the greater use of collateral for financial transactions in South Africa stemming from pending regulatory changes such as Basel III, Solvency II and the G-20 requirements for central clearing of standardised over-the-counter derivatives and improve the tracking and efficient use of collateral.

 

Collateral Management Conference on 31 October 2013

Strate, in conjunction with Clearstream, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bourse, will also be hosting an inaugural Collateral Management Conference on 31 October 2013 in Johannesburg to explore the different views on the impact the changing regulatory landscape will have on collateral management and the effects on the South African market. To RSVP, email info@Strate.co.za.

 

Should you require more details regarding the Collateral Management Project, please contact the Collateral Management team: Collateral@strate.co.za or via 011 759 5434.