Brussels, 02/08/2001 (Agence Europe) - As we mentioned, the European Commission has authorised agreements concluded between a certain number of large European and non-European banks aimed at the creation of a global network, called "Identrus, specialised in the authentication of electronic signatures and other aspects linked to financial and commercial operations through electronic means to guarantee security. In concrete terms, the Identrus network takes the form of a company under American law made up of a joint-venture between eight initial notifying parties, which are ABN AMRO, Bankers Trust, Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank, chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank and Deutsche Bank. Since registration of the notification in April 1999 in order to secure clearance, the number of shareholders in Identrus has increased to 21 and that the reduced share of each of them guarantees that no company will alone control Identrus. According to the agreements concluded, the network will be open to all financial institutions in the world, as long as they meet objective capital requirements, as defined by the "Basle Committee on Banking Regulations and Supervisory Practices", as well as certain financial rating requirements Each partner may also offer, in competition with all the other participants, its own independently created applications built upon the Identrus infrastructure. Likewise, each participant is free to set the price it charges to customers for authentication services. End-users are therefore free to choose any participant, and are thus not bound to use the habitual banking institution.
The Commission has authorised the system, considering that it would not lead to a substantial restriction on competition, for the following reasons: a) it entails no foreclosure risk for the market, which is open to all who meet objective criteria; b) it will face competitive checks from competing systems being developed by financial industry ventures, postal authorities and telecommunications carriers, among others; c) participants in Identrus are free to join other such types of systems.