Calastone announces strategic expansion with Head of Luxembourg office appointment______

Calastone Limited, the independent cross-border transaction network for the mutual funds industry, today announced the appointment of Sebastien Chaker as Head of its Luxembourg office. The appointment of Sebastien Chaker underscores Calastone’s commitment to the Luxembourg region and means that the firm is well-positioned to serve its growing Luxembourg client base. Mr Chaker will be responsible for working with the Luxembourg-based mutual fund industry to help them reap the benefits of mutual fund transaction automation and straight through processing.

Calastone provides a universal communication and message translation service. Irrespective of a firm’s preferred messaging protocol, participants send transactions and orders electronically via Calastone’s transaction network which normalises any message format to Calastone ISO 20022. As such, participants can benefit from communicating via common standards today, regardless of whether their counterparty uses another messaging protocol or communication method. Since launch in 2008, Calastone has been connecting domestic and international fund providers, distributors and transfer agents to help them improve their business processes, enjoying greater transparency, control and real time visibility throughout the lifecycle of their transactions.

Mr Chaker joins Calastone from Brown Brothers Harriman Limited where he was Global Head of Fund Solutions Business Development based in London since January 2007. Prior to this, Mr Chaker worked for Euroclear SA in Brussels where he was a Director in the Investment Funds Product Management division, with primary responsibility for defining and implementing Euroclear’s FundSettle global funds strategy. Mr Chaker’s career spans fifteen years of experience in the investment fund market, where he has also held sales and relationship management and marketing positions in Citibank’s global consumer business with primary responsibility for launching the Citichoice mutual fund platform in France.

Sebastien Chaker graduated in 1995 from the “Universite Libre de Bruxelles” in the Faculty of Economical, social & political sciences.

Commenting on the announcement, Kevin Lee, Co-founder and Managing Director of Calastone said, “Luxembourg is an important area of focus in our efforts to help bring greater efficiencies for executing cross-border mutual fund transactions. We have already signed up a number of important Luxembourg participants and quickly recognised the need to invest in a Luxembourg-based operation to better serve the local community. Sebastien brings a wealth of experience and excellent Luxembourg community relationships and we are excited to have him on board”.

Sebastien Chaker added, “I have been impressed with the pace at which Calastone has been connecting participants. I was particularly attracted by their vision to enable every firm, no matter their size, location, existing technology or messaging protocol to benefit from automation and STP. Calastone’s low cost approach to providing an international transaction network is clearly building traction and there is much more to follow which will benefit the global mutual fund industry. I am delighted to be involved in opening Calastone’s first international operation and look forward to driving greater transaction flows both in and out of Luxembourg”.

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