EquiLend Signs SuMi Trust, First Japanese Trust Bank

NEW YORK, May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- EquiLend, a leading provider of global securities finance trading and post trade services, announced today that SuMi Trust (Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, Limited) has become the latest Japanese domestic client to join the platform.

SuMi Trust went live on the platform through its agent on 30th March 2012 and EquiLend expects several other leading domestic participants to join in the near future. During the last 12 months EquiLend has seen a 15% increase in volumes year on year in Japan.

Brian Lamb, CEO of EquiLend, said "Having a bank of SuMi Trust's stature join the platform is a strong endorsement of EquiLend's suite of trading services and represents an important move for the business in the Japanese marketplace."  He continued, "We currently work with a number of international trustee banks and custodians in the country. However, SuMi Trust represents a major pinnacle for EquiLend with the domestic Japanese trust banks."

Nobuyoshi Fujii, Senior Manager of SuMi Trust London Branch, commented, "SuMi Trust is a leading provider of one-stop global trust services including pension plan advisory, investment management and custody.  With $770 billion AUM, our group is Japan's largest asset manager and one of the country's dominant custodians managing and administering significant public and corporate pension funds.  We believe the integration of EquiLend's services into our securities lending operations will result in significantly improved efficiencies to the benefit of our customer base.  Furthermore, the adoption of EquiLend will help improve the efficiency and liquidity of the Japanese equity market."

About EquiLend

EquiLend is a leading provider of trading and post trade services for the securities finance industry backed by 10 global financial institutions: BlackRock; Credit Suisse; Goldman Sachs; J.P. Morgan Clearing; J.P. Morgan; Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Morgan Stanley; Northern Trust; State Street; and UBS. With its robust suite of automated trading tools, EquiLend enables its clients to scale their businesses with great efficiency on a global basis in all securities finance markets.  Used by borrowers and lenders throughout the world, the EquiLend platform automates formerly manual trading and post-trade processes. Using EquiLend's complete end-to-end services reduces the risk of potential errors and eliminates the need to maintain costly point-to-point connections while allowing firms to drive down unit costs. Firms can then free more resources to expand their business and grow trading volumes without increasing costs. This makes the EquiLend platform a cost-effective choice for all institutions, regardless of their size. EquiLend has offices in New York, Toronto, London and Hong Kong.