Custodian bank in the context of "TARGET2-Securities"

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (/sæks/ SAKS) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many international financial centers. Goldman Sachs is the largest investment bank in the world by revenue and is ranked 55th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In the Forbes Global 2000 of 2024, Goldman Sachs ranked 23rd. It is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board.

Goldman Sachs offers services in investment banking (advisory for mergers and acquisitions and restructuring), securities underwriting, prime brokerage, asset management, and wealth management. It is a market maker for many types of financial products and provides clearing and custodian bank services. It operates private-equity funds and hedge funds. It structures complex and tailor-made financial products. It also owns Goldman Sachs Bank USA, a direct bank. It trades both on behalf of its clients (flow trading) and for its own account (proprietary trading). The company invests in and arranges financing for startups, and in many cases gets additional business as bookrunner when the companies launch initial public offerings.

HSBC Holdings plc (Chinese: 滙豐; lit. 'focus of wealth') is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business links to East Asia and a multinational footprint. It is the largest Europe-based bank by total assets, ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$3.098 trillion as of September 2024. This also puts it as the 7th largest bank in the world by total assets behind Bank of America, and the 3rd largest non-state owned bank in the world.

In 2021, HSBC had $10.8 trillion in assets under custody (AUC) and $4.9 trillion in assets under administration (AUA).

Book entry is a system of tracking ownership of securities where no certificate is given to investors. Several terms are often used interchangeably with "book entry" shares including "paperless shares", "electronic shares", "digital shares", "digital stock certificates", and "uncertificated shares". Some of these terms have somewhat different connotations but, at least in the United States, state securities laws only recognize certificated and uncertificated shares. In the case of book-entry-only (BEO) issues, while investors do not receive certificates, a custodian holds one or more global certificates. Dematerialized securities, in contrast, are ones in which no certificates exist; instead, the security issuer, its agent or a central securities depository keeps records, usually electronically of who holds outstanding securities.

Most investors who use an online broker or even a regular full-service broker will have their shares held in book-entry form. This is generally convenient, as one does not have to preserve physical stock certificates, and can buy/sell securities without turning certificates in or having new ones issued. Also, replacement costs for certificates are high in case one loses them, while book-entry ownership can never be lost thanks to technological backups.