Chairman's Letter

At the end of 2015, I transitioned from my role as Executive Chairman and moved into my new position as Non-Executive Chairman. I am pleased that I can continue to help lead a company that I admire greatly and am proud to serve.

When I joined DTCC in 2011, I never imagined just how challenging and exciting my time here would be. Early on, I learned that this organization does its best work when the stakes are at their highest. You don’t need to look any further than how we rose to the challenge in the devastating wake of Superstorm Sandy, helped protect the markets during the Knight Capital incident and continue to play a broader role in the post-crisis financial markets infrastructure. The common thread that connects these events is our employees. They are the backbone of our organization and are undoubtedly our most important asset. I want to thank them for their support, collaboration and friendship over the years.

Early on, I learned that this organization does its best work when the stakes are at their highest. You don’t need to look any further than how we rose to the challenge in the devastating wake of Superstorm Sandy, helped protect the markets during the Knight Capital incident and continue to play a broader role in the post-crisis financial markets infrastructure.

In looking back to my first months on the job, it was obvious that the company was performing well and doing outstanding work executing our most fundamental responsibilities of mitigating risk and delivering efficiencies to the industry. However, with sweeping changes occurring, we understood that we needed to evolve in order to help solve a new set of challenges that firms were beginning to face as regulatory mandates in the Americas, Europe and Asia were coming online. In addition, we had to prioritize our investments and make sure that we were getting a proper return on them as the company moved into a period of expansion.

We quickly set about analyzing every part of our business and identifying the strategic changes that were required to expand our mission as the industry looked to us for increased support. We needed to remain focused on mitigating risk, but also had to hone our skills in essential areas like strengthening client engagement, thinking more commercially, developing a global perspective and empowering employees. We also needed to expand our footprint to serve clients in all regions of the world and break down silos across businesses to better integrate our offerings. We have made significant progress on these and many other fronts, and I’d like to share with you several of our most significant accomplishments:

• We strengthened our ability to mitigate risk by deeply embedding risk management into every part of the organization, expanding the scope of the risk management organization and launching a multi-year initiative to modernize our risk systems.
• We enhanced our Board of Directors by improving Board practices and governance, widened the scope of expertise of the Board and appointed non-participant Directors to serve as chairs of all Board Committees.
• We expanded and diversified the senior management team to gain a wider range of experiences, opinions and insights to help lead the firm.
• We acquired and integrated Omgeo into DTCC to help drive a single strategy across the post-trade lifecycle.
• We launched new joint ventures to solve global challenges related to cybersecurity, client entity data and collateral management.
• We sharpened our financial discipline and analytical skills, updated our legal entity structure and strengthened our balance sheet, which included raising $800 million in new capital from our owner-members and the institutional capital markets.
• We refreshed our brand to reflect our expanded mission to secure today and shape tomorrow, grew our role within the industry as a thought leader and advanced critical initiatives by fostering dialogue and collaboration.

We quickly set about analyzing every part of our business and identifying the strategic changes that were required to expand our mission as the industry looked to us for increased support.

Because my decision to move into the non-Executive Chairman role was directly linked to the state of the company, I spent a lot of time over the past year examining where we are in our evolution, analyzing the progress we have made on several key issues and determining whether we are positioned for the growth needed to fulfill our expanded mission. After considering these questions, I am more confident than ever in DTCC and our future.

We have an excellent senior executive team in place, led by Mike Bodson, and outstanding employees who are determined to build upon our impressive legacy. Of course, there is still more work to do, but we have always been attracted to the toughest challenges because they create the biggest opportunities. DTCC is a very different company today, playing a broader and more impactful role in the industry than at any time in our past – and we are committed to expanding our level of support in the years ahead.

It has been a privilege to serve as Executive Chairman for the past 5 years. As I transition into my new role, I look forward to focusing more of my attention on the long-term strategic direction of the firm.

Thank you for your support and for the confidence you have placed in me.