Euroclear reports strong business income growth in Q1 2025
BRUSSELS, May 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Results for the first quarter ending 31 March 2025
Financial highlights
Strong underlying[1] business growth offsetting lower interest income
Following the acquisition of a 49% stake in Inversis (see below), Inversis' results are consolidated as from March 1st, contributing to the group profit for €1.2 million through the share of results.
The impacts of the Russian sanctions are detailed in the last section of this press release.
Valerie Urbain, Chief Executive Officer of Euroclear, commented:
'We have made a strong start to 2025, reporting a 10% increase in business income driven by robust growth in safekeeping fees and settlement income, offsetting the anticipated decrease in interest income as rates have declined. Despite market volatility and uncertainty, our continued growth shows the strength of our diversified, resilient business model.
We continue to closely monitor the impact of tariffs imposed by the US administration announced in early April, but the immediate direct impact on our business so far remains limited. Resilience and reliability remain the top priorities for our business and the volatile backdrop has underscored the strength of Euroclear's systems, which continue to perform highly efficiently and securely during periods of elevated trading volumes.
As Europe's largest player in post-trade, continuing to drive market openness, innovation and efficiency is central to our approach and we have made strong progress against our strategic priorities during the start of 2025. Our partnership with Microsoft will further enhance client experience, support our strategic ambitions and drive new opportunities for business growth. We are increasingly leveraging technological evolutions such as AI throughout the business to transform markets and to build an open digital and data-enabled platform that promotes collaboration, drives efficiency and delivers value for all market participants.'
Business performance
The key operating metrics (end of period unless stated otherwise) demonstrate an excellent business performance during the period.
Euroclear has reached record levels in settlement and safekeeping activities, with assets under custody growing for the tenth quarter in a row and closing the first quarter over the €41 trillion mark. The turnover increased by 23% compared to Q1 2024 thanks to high equity quotations, robust results in fixed income and increased settlement activity due to market volatility in the context of geopolitical uncertainty. The outstanding of Euroclear's Collateral Highway now surpasses to €2 trillion, while the funds depot is close to its peak of €3.6 trillion.
Q1 2025 business milestones
Strategic stake in Inversis
Early March 2025, Euroclear successfully completed the acquisition of 49% of Inversis. This first transaction paves the way for the full acquisition of the Spanish company. This aligns with Euroclear's strategic vision to accelerate the growth of its one-stop-shop funds offering – Euroclear FundsPlace – and expand its presence in Southern Europe. Inversis' technology-led, diversified and resilient business model underpinned by continued growth perfectly complements Euroclear's existing funds business.
New Singapore branch
Further delivering on its Asia strategy, Euroclear Bank received approval for a branch licence in Singapore. Effective 1 February 2025, the new Singapore branch operates under a wholesale banking licence, enabling it to provide a broader range of activities. This change underscores Euroclear's long-standing commitment to the Asia Pacific market and its strategic focus on enhancing operational resilience while increasing proximity to clients in the region.
New, innovative service for US Treasury repo market
Euroclear launched a US Treasury Delivery-Versus-Payment (DVP) repo service. The service offers cash lenders similar operational efficiency for DVP repo transactions as triparty repo transactions. Repo collateral is held in a segregated account with the cash lender's custodian of choice. Electronic trading workflows on venues are integrated into the new service, making activities such as collateral allocation seamless for cash lenders and their counterparties.
Strategic partnership with Microsoft harnessing cloud, data and AI
Euroclear entered into a 7-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to transform Euroclear clients' experience and drive new opportunities for growth. The partnership further strengthens Euroclear's business ecosystem and technology infrastructure by leveraging Microsoft's leading technology, expertise and cloud services. This will enhance Euroclear's ability to create value for all market participants and unlock new opportunities at the core of the capital markets ecosystem. Microsoft will support Euroclear's strategic ambition in key growth areas like funds and client experience as well as its long-term vision to evolve into a Digital and Data-Enabled Financial Market Infrastructure.
Russian sanctions impacts
Financial impacts of the Russian assets
Update on Russian sanctions and countermeasures
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in market-wide application of international sanctions. Euroclear considers the application of international sanctions as a key obligation. Therefore, well established processes are in place which have allowed the group to implement the sanctions while maintaining our normal course of business.
As a result of the sanctions, blocked coupon payments and redemptions owed to sanctioned entities continue to accumulate on Euroclear Bank's balance sheet. At the end of March 2025, Euroclear Bank's balance sheet totalled €230 billion, of which €195 billion relate to sanctioned Russian assets.
In line with Euroclear's risk appetite and policies and as expected by the EU Capital Requirements Regulation, Euroclear's cash balances are re-invested to minimise risk and capital requirements. In the first quarter of 2025, interest arising on cash balances from Russian-sanctioned assets was approximately €1.5 billion.
In May 2024, the European Commission has adopted a new regulation about a windfall contribution applicable to CSDs holding Russian Central Bank assets with a total value of more than €1 million. The profits generated by the reinvestment of these sanctioned amounts dating from 15 February 2024 onwards are required to be contributed to the European Fund for Ukraine. After retention of a 10% share of the windfall contribution to comply with capital and risk management requirements, Euroclear paid approx. €3.5 billion to the European Fund for Ukraine for the 2024 fiscal year.
Euroclear continues to act prudently and to strengthen its capital by retaining the remainder of the Russian sanction related profits as a buffer against current and future risks. Euroclear is focused on minimising potential legal, financial, and operational risks that may arise for itself and its clients, while complying with its obligations.
As a direct consequence of the sanctions and countermeasures, Euroclear faces multiple proceedings in Russian courts. Since Russia considers international sanctions against public order, Russian claimants initiated legal proceedings aiming mainly to access assets blocked in Euroclear Bank's books, by claiming an equivalent amount in Russian Ruble and enforcing their claim in Russia. Despite all legal actions taken by Euroclear and the considerable resources mobilised, the probability of unfavourable rulings in Russian courts is high since Russia does not recognise the international sanctions.
[1] Excluding Russian sanctions impacts
[2] Based on estimated RWA of around €14.4 billion (of which around €6,3 billion of RWA are related to Russian assets) and CET1 capital of around €8.8 billion
About Euroclear
Euroclear group is the financial industry's trusted provider of post trade services. Guided by its purpose, Euroclear innovates to bring safety, efficiency and connections to financial markets for sustainable economic growth. Euroclear provides settlement and custody of domestic and cross-border securities for bonds, equities and derivatives and investment funds. As a proven, resilient capital market infrastructure, Euroclear is committed to delivering risk-mitigation, automation and efficiency at scale for its global client franchise. The Euroclear group comprises Euroclear Bank, the International CSD, as well as Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear Finland, Euroclear France, Euroclear Nederland, Euroclear Sweden, Euroclear UK & International.
Contact: Pascal Brabant, [email protected], +32 475 78 36 62
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As of December 31, 2024, Musk owned 714,754,706 shares, or 20.3% of all shares. That includes 410,794,076 shares in the Elon Musk Revocable Trust dated July 22, 2003, and 303,960,630 issuable on exercise of options within 60 days after December 31, 2024. As of then, all of the shares that Musk owned outright were in that revocable trust. They include 235,998,721 shares pledged against his personal loans. The opening value Tesla shares on Tuesday, May 27, 2025, was $347.35. The value of the shares pledged is $81.97 billion. Round it to $82 billion. A quarter of that amount is $20.5 billion. According to the board's rule, Musk can have borrowed no more than $3.5 billion against all that stock, or 4.3% of the shares' total value. Furthermore, the shares he's pledged are 6.7% of all Tesla shares. If the board approved the borrowing because the loaned amount was far lower than the value of the shares, the question of potential impact on the valuation of the company's market cap remains. Not just for Tesla, but any company whose executives could pledge significant amounts of stock for low valuations. 'Banks typically require 50-70% loan-to-value ratios on stock collateral, with daily mark-to-market,' says Giacomo Santangelo, a senior lecturer in economics at Fordham University. 'A 20% stock decline on a 60% loan-to-value loan means the borrower must immediately post additional collateral or face forced liquidation. This creates cascade risk, where small declines trigger margin calls, forcing either more pledging or open-market sales, putting more pressure on the stock.' Santangelo adds that from a share valuation perspective, 'traditional models miss this entirely' as they typically assume continuous liquidity. 'But pledged shares behave more like restricted stock with embedded put options held by creditors,' meaning there are two constraints. One is on the shareholder's ability to turn the shares into cash through a sale. The other is of a potential forced sale. Depending on the circumstances, banks can look for other assets, whether securities, real estate, cash, or even alternative assets like art. If an executive is caught on a margin call from borrowing, where the equity of the stock pledge is worth less than a set baseline, the person will have to pony up more cash, offer alternative assets, or sell off additional shares to cover the balance. This can happen when a stock's price drops. Tesla has seen downward pressures on its shares. As Yahoo Finance reported, Tesla electric vehicle registrations (a proxy for sales) were down 49% year-over-year in Europe even as overall EV registrations were up 34.1%. Citi Analyst Jeff Chung noted that recent sales in China were down about 16% year over year, as Barron's reported. Shares did jump on Tuesday, May 27, on Musk saying that he would return to the office rather than spending more time in politics. In 2022, Forbes reported that out of the Forbes 400 list of 2021, 32 billionaires pledged shares of public companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq where they were either directors or significant shareholders (at least 5% of total shares of a company). Musk reportedly pledged a greater amount than the other 31 billionaires combined. He was fueling business deals like the Twitter takeover. According to that Forbes report, he pledged $62.5 billion in Tesla stock as collateral for margin loans of $12.5 billion. In the 2022 proxy statement, the board wrote that it limited loans with stock collateral to 25% of the pledged stocks. 'We believe this cap places sufficient limitation on any potential risk attendant to pledging stock, while still allowing flexibility in the use of equity awards to promote long-termism and ownership culture,' they wrote at the time. Also, the statement noted that a proxy advisory firm had 'concerns about the Board's risk oversight with respect to Tesla's policy regarding pledging of shares by directors and officers.' The proxy advisory was also concerned over 'hypotheticals of increasing share pledges.' In 2023, the board added the $3.5 billion cap to Musk's borrowing. Whether that applied in retrospect is unclear. If so, it would suggest that Musk had to repay a massive sum to keep within the new bounds. There seems to be nothing to indicate that his previous borrowing was grandfathered. If it were, there should be some documentation to that effect. Had he repaid that money, it would seem unlikely that vast number of shares would still be pledged. If he did repay the previous amounts, then under the Board's rules, the value of the shares to the maximum he could borrow, $3.5 billion, would be a roughly 23-times collateral coverage. According to Santangelo, that would signal that the lender saw an extreme risk in the pledged shares. What is clear is that in 2023, Musk had 238,441,261 shares pledged — 2,442,540 shares more than in 2024. That was a big jump from 2022, when Musk had pledged 92,331,125 shares, just under 39% of the 2023 figure. Also, the total shares he had in 2022 was 172,608,251, 21.2% of the total shares. There a large increase in the total number of shares as well, from 1,033,507,611 in 2022 to 3,164,102,701 in 2023. 'The whole point of caring about how much stock the executives and directors have is so investors can assess how well the interests of insiders align with theirs,' Minow says. 'Using stock as collateral arguably provides even more of an incentive to keep the price up, unless, as apparent in the Twitter purchase, the board is willing to open the spigot to make up for any squeezes.'
