Abstract. The securities markets are going through material structural changes. Some best practices have been identified in order to deliver safety and efficient securities settlement systems. The paper investigates when gross settlement works better than the net solution. We highlight that, due to the new trends in securities markets characteristics, the safetyness criteria might deliver indifference between using gross or net settlement. The efficiency criterion is the one that makes the difference. We build a model and develop some scenarios in order to assess what type of settlement (gross or net) works best.

Keywords: securities; settlement; risk; efficiency; banks.