Our Global Markets business provides institutional clients with value-added solutions in financing, liquidity, and proprietary market research. The team’s comprehensive liquidity offering supports clients’ foreign exchange, electronic trading, portfolio restructuring, and currency hedging requirements across multiple open-source architecture platforms. We back our multi-asset class trade execution capabilities with advanced technology to help enhance and preserve the value of our clients’ portfolios.

Through data-driven research, our clients gain insight into investor behavior, media narratives, and real-time economics that interact to drive markets. With teams in 26 global operating sites serving clients in approximately 80 markets, we provide a robust global network and local market expertise that keep our clients connected to market developments as they happen.

In 2021, we continued to partner with clients to provide services that meet their investment management process needs, and differentiated ourselves in Global Markets by enhancing capabilities, expanding our global network, and broadening our research agenda — all while continuing to deliver value to our shareholders.

MEETING OUR CLIENTS’ NEEDS WITH EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS

Throughout the year, we continued to strengthen our global trading platforms by introducing new solutions to help our clients unlock the potential of ever-changing markets. To meet our clients’ most sophisticated needs and support State Street’s goal to become the enterprise outsourcer of choice, we expanded our electronic trading platforms and outsourced trading services.

Electronic trading platforms

Working closely with our clients to provide differentiated execution services, we expanded our algorithmic trading offerings, introducing new solutions for foreign exchange and equities to improve flexibility of execution strategies and enhance access to liquidity.

Building on our market-leading position in sponsored repo and securities lending businesses, we launched a new electronic peer-to-peer repo trading platform designed in close collaboration with buy-side clients. The platform simplifies overnight and term repo trading between counterparties and reflects our commitment to creating innovative solutions tailored to the buy-side market.

We also created a peer-to-peer electronic trading channel for enhanced custody and agency lending to improve liquidity. This channel has seen volume increase exponentially for enhanced custody while internalizing trade maintenance and operational work.

Looking forward, this model will be the foundation for our own proprietary securities lending platform to external counterparties and represents an opportunity to offer new, more complex trade workflows (e.g., Auction) to the borrower community.

Outsourced trading services

We expanded and differentiated our currency management service, delivering hedging solutions to investment managers and asset owners. Our agency-only share class and portfolio hedging products allow institutional investors to manage currency risk and efficiently distribute products across borders.

Also in 2021, we expanded our multi-asset class outsourced trading offering, leveraging our global trading technology and robust liquidity network to provide customized, holistic trading solutions. This service provides clients with broader access to markets and new asset classes while reducing costs and expanding their access to liquidity.

We also enhanced our Collateral+ service, a holistic collateral service that helps asset managers and owners calculate, navigate, and optimize their collateral, including uncleared OTC derivatives, FX options, swaptions, and hedging trades.

To provide clients with deeper insight into the optimal placement of collateral and the lowest transaction cost routes, we added pre- and post-trade collateral inventory optimization, as well as margin analytics capabilities.

Embedding ESG capabilities as core offerings continues to be a key focus. In securities finance, we partnered with State Street Global Advisors to launch the ESG Securities Lending Comingled Cash Collateral Reinvestment Strategy, and we increased representation of ESG funds in currency management.

Leadership in core offerings

Our leadership position in foreign exchange is a testament to our success in meeting our clients’ needs through continuous innovation. In the annual Euromoney Magazine FX survey, we were named No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction for Real Money Clients for the second consecutive year and No. 1 in Macro and Quantitative Research.* This illustrates our leading position as a top-10 FX provider globally.

The creativity and ingenuity of our employees are critical drivers of our success, and we continue to invest in technology and people to drive the long-term growth of Global Markets.

* Euromoney Magazine 2021 FX Survey

STRENGTHENING OUR GLOBAL NETWORK

Recognizing the increasingly global nature of our clients’ needs, we continue to broaden our franchise capabilities in high-growth geographic markets, starting with offering FX services in emerging currency markets.

Latin America was a key region of focus in 2021. We extended our footprint in the region, establishing trading capabilities in Brazil to support global clients with our solutions and scale. We now have 21 trading and sales locations globally, which provide liquidity and onshore access to our clients.

In Europe, we increased our presence by establishing market-making capabilities in Germany. In Asia Pacific (APAC), we began an enhanced currency conversion arrangement involving onshore yuan (CNY) under Northbound Bond Connect.

As an FX settlement bank in the China-Hong Kong Bond Connect Scheme with membership in the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), we offer clients direct onshore Chinese yuan (CNY) and offshore Chinese yuan (CNH) liquidity in spot, forward, and swap markets. We also expanded our currency management presence by adding portfolio management capabilities in Australia.

DELIVERING AN INFORMATION ADVANTAGE

Delivering exclusive, high-value research to our clients is an essential differentiator for State Street, helping to strengthen our leading position as a sell-side provider.

In 2021, we continued to build on the success of State Street Associates,® our academic and market research arm that partners with some of the world’s leading academics in the areas of investor behavior, asset allocation and risk, ESG investing, private equity, inflation and economics, and media sentiment. We further strengthened our research capabilities by launching our Insights research platform, which provides clients with direct access to our latest investment ideas and analytics.

We also added two academic partners to our team. With the growing focus on the digital economy, we have partnered with Antoinette Schoar, an economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Schoar is an expert in corporate finance, organizational economics, and entrepreneurship who will provide unique insight for our thought leadership focused on navigating the risks and opportunities in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Harvard Business School Professor and economist Robin Greenwood also joined us to advance research on macro-level topics such as central bank policy, equity investing, financial crises, and behavioral finance.

GROWTH THROUGH INNOVATION

In Global Markets, we partner with our clients to better understand and anticipate their needs, to make their investment management process more effective and efficient. This has been the inspiration behind our growth and the driver of deep, lasting relationships with our clients.

Looking ahead, we remain committed to leveraging this spirit of innovation and leadership, along with our market position, in conjunction with our Charles River Development front-office capabilities and our State Street Alpha^SM platform, to deliver industry-leading solutions to meet our clients’ most pressing challenges.