Euroclear, the largest securities settlement company in Europe, and which supports the London Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext, has offered cautious backing to a plan outlined yesterday by seven rivals to reform European settlement, but called for more detail on the proposal.

Euroclear said it supported the drive to reform European cross-border settlement, which investment banks complain is as much as ten times more expensive than in the US. However, the announcement yesterday of Link Up Markets, an initiative led by Euroclear’s main rival Clearstream, the German clearer, and backed six other European central securities depositories raised more questions than it supplied answers, it said.