As State Street celebrates its 20th anniversary in Canada, executives reflected on the impact the company has had since it opened its first Toronto office in 1990.
State Street also released a report Thursday, outlining a dramatic shift starting to take place in Europe, with a wave of consolidation on the horizon.
According to October’s issue of Vision Focus, an in-house publication, the European investment management industry is undergoing “unprecedented change.”
“The industry is likely to look very different within five years,” the report states.
A series of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is likely to occur in the near future, as institutions look to focus on their core operations.
“Over the next five years, mergers will lead to the creation of larger firms with logical structures — some with low-cost, scalable business models and others focused on building stable boutique managers,” the report said.
State Street considers itself an industry leader and trailblazer when it comes to monitoring and responding to trends and used its 20th anniversary in Canada to mark some of its successes.
“We fit in the top tier [of pension custodians],” said Kevin Drynan senior vice-president and managing director of sales and relationship management at State Street Global Markets.
State Street’s Canadian office helped facilitate global investing in the pension industry in the early 1990s, he said.
The trend toward increased consolidation and M&A activity is an example of yet another change State Street is striving to stay on top of.
The increased recordkeeping requirements and move from manual- to technological-based information services were major challenges that State Street handled with a great deal of finesse, Drynan said.
“There’s definitely a need for speed now,” he said.
Since opening its first office in Canada in 1990, State Street has grown its client base to more than 360 institutional investors. The company is also one of the largest asset managers and a leading provider of investment services and trading and research solutions for Canadian institutional investors.
“Canada is an important market for State Street and our clients around the world, and I am firmly committed to maintaining our position as a financial services leader in this market for years to come,” said Jay Hooley, president and CEO of State Street Corp.
