BNP Paribas Securities Services starts with one important advantage: very few people outside the organisation expect it to succeed as a global custodian. It is often dismissed as a business that is little more than the sum of what Paribas purchased from JP Morgan in 1995: a strong European network that functions effectively as a clearing agent for broker/dealers.

While it is certainly that - in this year's Global Investor clearing survey it tied with Citibank as the best overall clearing bank in Europe