NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Depository Trust & Clearing rporation (DT) today announced the release for public mment of a first set of drafts of rporate action announcement messages under its rporate actions re-engineering initiative. The release of the draft messages is a significant step in transforming the way rporate action announcements will be processed in the U.S.

Working in llaboration with SWIFT, DT has created its new rporate action messages based upon the recently released ISO 20022 (International anization for Standards) rporate action message formats. The move to ISO standards as the primary format for rporate action announcement messaging by DT is a major step forward and away from the use of proprietary formats.

Currently, ISO messaging standards are widely used throughout the global financial services industry, as well as between custodial banks and investment managers in the U.S. By adopting the standard, DT and its depository subsidiary, The Depository Trust pany (DTC), are beginning to close the straight through processing gap by using a single, global model. DTC serves as the central securities depository for the U.S., holding about 85% to 90% of all U.S. equities, rporate bonds, municipal bonds and money market instruments.

The new model and message ncept will form the basis of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) taxonomy that ultimately will allow issuers to directly and electronically mmunicate rporate action announcements around the global financial markets. DT is taking a leadership role in developing rporate actions messages and is working with SWIFT on the global implications.

“This is a significant first milestone in our ntinuing, multi-year effort to fundamentally change how U.S. rporate actions are announced and processed,” said Donald F. Donahue, DT Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Whether receiving XBRL tagged documents from issuers or mmunicating with our customers through ISO 20022 messages, a primary goal of DT’s rporate action re-engineering project is to help the flow of information between issuers and investors move more smoothly and with fewer errors, at less st, using a single global standard.”

Chris Church, Chief Executive, Americas and Global Head of Securities, SWIFT added: “The only way to solve the age-old processing problems of rporate actions is for the industry to work in llaboration. DT’s mmitment to this project, together with SWIFT and XBRL, is a game changer for the industry. The release of the draft messages is an exciting milestone towards helping the industry rce st, eliminate risk and increase the transparency of rporate actions announcements.”

DT has released announcement and cancellation advice messages for rporate actions in ISO 20022 formats. The definitions used by DT, along with schemas and other format information, are available for industry review and mment in six separate documents on DT’s web at http://www.dt/leadership/issues/reengineering/rp_actions/specs.php. Documentation supporting additional message types, including payment messages, is schled for release by midyear 2010.

DT used SWIFT’s standards development utilities to develop the custom messages model and documentation supporting the ISO 20022 messages for rporate action announcements. This will provide a nsistent model representation of ISO 20022-based messaging.

DT new messages also have been able to take advantage of ISO 20022’s ability to mmunicate non-standard rporate actions data in a formatted manner and within the same message, something which does not fully exist in the current standard ISO 15022 messages.

“Although we have adopted ISO messaging, we still face a situation where about half of the data ntent is not vered in the message, and in fact is not even in the ISO data dictionary,” said David Hands, DT Director of Product Management, Global rporate Actions. “Therefore, we are using extensions to ver these situations in a nsistent, standard format.”

Hands noted that DT was ntinuing to work with SWIFT and National Market Practice Groups globally to determine what changes need to be made to further align the DT and ISO data models.