The Group of Experts on Cross-border Bond Transactions and Settlement Issues (GoE) was established in 2008 by the Asian Bond Markets Initiative (ABMI). This report put forward for consideration three options for a regional settlement intermediary (RSI) and suggested organizing a group of market experts for further investigation of these options. The final results of the GoE work are presented in this report. PART I contains the result of the estimation of cross-border transaction costs in ASEAN+3. PART II discusses the results of the feasibility study of the RSI options and presents recommendations for the next step. Finally, PART III presents the list of major barriers to cross-border bond transactions and settlement and a set of recommendations to address them. Although the three parts are interrelated, each covers a topic independent enough to be discussed separately. Thus, each part carries its own introduction and summary. Also policy recommendations are formulated separately for the RSI and the barrier study and contained in PART II and PART III.
