The Bank of England says it will start developing the Crest electronic share settlement system, successor to the abandoned Taurus, in May: initial funding for the building and trial stage should be between 10m and 12m – but the Old Lady warns that it will be essential for enough potential Crest users to commit themselves in principle to take part in the ownership structure in a relatively formal way before May 3 if construction of the system is to start: from its Threadneedle Street base, it suggests that Crest should be owned by a separate company, called Crestco, with a subscription of shares open to all those expecting to participate but with each single company or group restricted to 10% maximum; it says the cost of software in the building stage would be around 5m to 7m spread over two years, as part of the 20m to 30m estimated total; it hopes that the project will be up and running by mid-1996.
