First Person: Wade McDonald

Wade McDonald, head of sales and business development Europe at HSBC Securities Services, says custodians must focus on asset and cash safety

Since I started in the global custody industry more than 25 years ago, we have witnessed several cycles of change – each cycle being driven by the needs of institutional investors and their downstream clients.

I can remember the early days of our industry where it was no longer accepted that fund managers would be ‘global custodians’ and it was decided that linked activities, such as securities-lending activities performed by the fund managers, were best handled by an independent global