APPENDIX 
641 
of the Stock Clearing Corporation, went abroad to make a survey 
of security handling and settlement practices in London, Paris, Berlin, 
and Vienna, which, among other things, made apparent to many Stock 
Exchange Governors here the theoretical benefits of centralizing secur- 
ity deliveries. The war period for some years interrupted the develop- 
ment of this idea. On September 10, 1924, a special committee upon 
Security Centralization was appointed, to investigate broadly the 
possibilities of improving New York security handling practice. Care- 
ful surveys were made of the transfer and registration of shares, their 
delivery, “substitutions” in loans, and many other such phases of the 
problem. In 1926 the Economist to the New York Stock Exchange 
went abroad to make a thorough survey of security handling and 
settlement practices under the London Stock Exchange, the Berliner 
Borse, and the Paris Parquet and Coulisse. 
In London as in New York, security deliveries are made direct 
between offices, although the Share and Loan Department of the 
London Stock Exchange maintains facilities for the handling of con- 
tracts in securities which are temporarily tied up in the process of 
transfer. In the Giro-Verkehr (or “Turnover Department”) of the 
Bank des Berliner Kassen-Vereins, facilities are established for the 
centralization of security deliveries between members of the Berlin 
Stock Exchange; the Kassen-Verein, however, takes no responsibility 
for the goodness of such deliveries, and simply serves as a “post- 
office” system to economize the employment of time and messengers 
in making Stock Exchange security deliveries. The Compagnie des 
Agents de Change in Paris has established the best centralized security 
delivery that the writer has ever studied, since here the central author- 
ity passes upon and accepts responsibility for the legitimacy and 
deliverable character of the security certificates passing through it. 
But in making this comparison between French and German methods, 
it is only fair to point out that the Berlin term clearing organization— 
the Liquidationskasse A. G.—assumes full liability on all Borse mem- 
bers’ cleared term security balances, and that the check and deposit 
department (Giro-Effekten-Depot) of the Kassen-Vereins has strict 
rules and thorough surveillance over security certificates accepted by 
it for deposit. 
The main reasons why the centralization of security deliveries has 
been developed in Paris and Berlin but not in London and New York 
are: (1) the predominant use of bearer shares and bonds in France 
and Germany has made such an evolution obvious and easy there, while 
the prevailing use of registered bonds and shares in London, and of 
registered shares in New York, has inhibited anv such spontaneous