Langbar International

Cash assets are not necessarily cash: the word "assets" is superfluous otherwise. The RNS refers. Pearson's semantics are not lost on everyone.

A custodian has issued a depository receipt to confirm that it holds an asset, as legal owner.

The purpose of that receipt is to allow the asset's beneficial owner to negotiate the asset in the market, without legal title to it passing from the custodian.

The underlying asset may be almost anything. A contract (such as a term deposit with a bank) is one example.

Euroclear transacts both clearing and settlement when the receipt is to change hands. Clearing is the process wherein what is to be delivered by both parties is agreed and settlement is the process of delivery. The two are separable and Pearson has never given a settlement date, though he did give a clearing date, which is largely irrelevant.

At all times the actual asset remains with the custodian (aka "safekeeper").

The custodian can have no better title to the asset than it obtained.

All this talk of actual hard cash being transferred is total nonsense. If ABN Amro cannot trade the security (the DR cash derivative) then LGB gets no cash.

Pearson has quite posibly done nothing whatsoever wrong in the legal sense. He cannot be blamed for others' ignorance of terminology.

I shall leave it to others to discuss how the guy must regard the average LGB punter and say only that his silence gives me sufficient flavour of it.


My short looks superb and I look forward to indirectly obtaining the assets of those long.

A Dios, amigos.