View from City Road: Bank should get on Crest
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Your support makes all the difference.The British usually relish a really big cock-up along the lines of Dunkirk or the Grand National start fiasco. Taurus was different. Too many City folk's bread and butter depends on London developing a quick, cheap and efficient way of settling share bargains. If it does not, then the present seepage in business to other centres such as Frankfurt could accelerate.
So Taurus's successor, Crest, simply cannot be allowed to fail. The more so given that the Stock Exchange first recommended book entry transfer of shares to replace the fortnightly account system back in 1981.
When the exchange axed Taurus the Bank was given the job of honest broker between City vested interests. It is against this background that Pen Kent delivered the Bank's plans for Crest.
Mr Kent insisted that those awkwardly vocal people who want to rejig the existing Talisman system are missing the point. Talisman was fine as a propeller-driven system, but now we are in the jet age.
The Stock Exchange did build a jet, but it was the equivalent of a Nimrod, the pounds 1bn early warning aircraft that was abandoned.
Mr Kent said the question of who will build Crest and who will regulate it remained open, although the Bank would like the main City players to own the system. The Bank also said recently it had built three settlement systems of a similar complexity, if not scale, within deadlines and to budget.
Why not therefore tell Mr Kent and his people to get on with it? Who is better to build a system than its designers? The Bank should get Crest up and running and then privatise it. Any profits would more than cover the development costs. Mr Kent would then be in line for the perfect retirement job - as chairman of Crest.
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