Snyder says that State Street can indeed draw a link between its intellectual capital and its volumes. "This is not run-of-the-mill research - the work we do is very specialized and fact-based," he says. "We have 15% of the world's securities passing through our electronic vaults. That is a mammoth asset size. This base, plus our team of researchers that build our flow-based metrics of investor behaviour, gives us a big advantage." That advantage is crucial, as other non-custody banks strive to take that business away. "Banks don't have to do anything to attract forex volumes from custody clients," complains one rival. "We convince asset managers not to use custodians for their forex business." But Snyder is not worried. "I have been in this business for over 20 years, and frankly that is an old story," he says. "It may be true for other custodians, but we can manage any...