We have increased our quarterly dividend twice each year since 1978. Over the last ten years, dividends per share have grown at a 16% compound annual growth rate. Funds for cash distributions to our shareholders by the parent company are derived from a variety of sources. The level of dividends paid to shareholders on our common stock, which was $239 million in 2005, is reviewed regularly and determined by the Board considering our liquidity, capital adequacy and recent earnings history and prospects, as well as economic conditions and other factors deemed relevant. Federal and state banking regulations place certain restrictions on dividends paid by subsidiary banks to the parent holding company. In addition, bank regulators have the authority to prohibit bank holding companies from paying dividends if they deem such payment to be an unsafe or unsound practice. At December 31, 2005, the parent company had $9.63 billion of liquid assets with which to meet dividend declaration and other payment obligations. Information concerning dividends from our subsidiary banks is in Note 13 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Form 10-K under Item 8.
TO OUR SHAREHOLDERS
State Street delivered value in 2005.
We delivered value to our shareholders, our customers, our employees and the communities in which we operate. We achieved this value by focusing on delivering for our customers, executing our plan against our goals, performing consistently for our shareholders, providing more opportunities for our employees, and continuing to give back to the communities where we do business.
Our goals for 2005 included growth in operating earnings per share of between 10 and 15 percent, growth in operating revenue of between 8 and 12 percent, and operating return on shareholders equity of between 14 and 17 percent. We achieved these goals, increasing operating earnings per share from continuing operations by 14 percent and operating revenue by 10 percent and recording return on shareholders equity from continuing operations of 15.3 percent. Assets under custody hit an all-time high of $10.1 trillion and assets under management rose to a record $1.4 trillion.
2005 was our 28th consecutive year of operating earnings per share growth and our 27th consecutive year of dividend increases, which rose 12 percent. We also repurchased 13 million shares of our stock, putting our share count at 334 million shares outstanding, just as it was at the end of 2004.
I measure the years achievements in four ways.
Financial
We remained focused on the bottom line in 2005, carefully balancing revenue growth with continued expense management. This focus allowed us to generate positive operating leverage for the year, an objective I set out to accomplish when I took over as chairman and chief executive officer in July 2004, and one that I continue to target. I view our 2005 results as a start, and an indication that we are heading in the right direction.
Business growth across the company helped fuel our revenue increase in 2005. We added more than 2,000 new investment servicing and investment management wins in 2005, a result of our strong sales culture and our ability to execute. State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), our investment management arm and the largest institutional asset manager in the world, also posted significant growth in 2005 and improved its contribution to State Street overall. SSgA now represents 21 percent of State Streets total pretax income, up from 17 percent a year ago.
We continued to deepen existing customer relationships and expand new product capabilities. These factors, combined with new business growth, enabled us to deliver what I consider to be better top-line performance than our peers.
We continue to see significant opportunities for growth outside of the United States, which accounted for 39 percent of State Streets revenue in 2005, up from 37 percent at the end of 2004. I have set a goal of increasing this number to 50 percent over time, fueled in part by the growth of savings and retirement assets in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region and the globalization of investing.
In addition to revenue growth, positive operating leverage was achieved through expense control. By monitoring our headcount, adding mainly to support new business wins and by better aligning our real estate portfolio with our needs, we slowed our rate of expense growth. Our strengthened and more cost-effective global servicing model, shaped in part by new regulatory requirements, helped us to better serve our customers in the locations where they do business. We now have processing hubs in multiple locations around the world including Canada and India.
The centralized treasury group that we formed early in 2005 has improved management of our balance sheet, which is driven by customer liabilities. To better position State Street for rising interest rates, in 2005 we expanded the investment portfolio and adjusted the mix of investments to include higher yielding floating-rate securities, ending the year with a conservatively invested portfolio, 95 percent of which was AA rated or better.
Customer
State Streets singular focus on providing large, global institutional investors with unparalleled service and value remained a differentiator for our company in 2005. Our ability to handle complex transactions, create innovative solutions and improve efficiencies helped us to attract new customers and add significant value to our existing customer relationships around the world.
2,086
14%
new investment servicing and
growth in operating earnings per share
investment management wins
from continuing operations
Major wins that fell into the expanded business category in 2005 included a landmark investment manager operations outsourcing renewal from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in Edinburgh, extending our relationship with this customer well into a second decade. The years biggest investment servicing win, from Columbia Management Advisors, LLC, the asset management arm of Bank of America, gave State Street a key role in one of the largest fund integrations in the history of the mutual fund industry. This piece of business expands upon our existing relationship with a fund family that was acquired by Bank of America and illustrates our ability to earn the trust and confidence of our customers, as does another investment servicing appointment from Charles Schwab Investment Management for $149 billion in assets. Two wins from Volkswagen Group one in the United Kingdom and the other in Germany are further proof of our ability to expand many of the custody and accounting relationships we established years ago.
We also established many new customer relationships in 2005 in all major geographies and across all our capabilities. These relationships include conducting one of the largest-ever transition management assignments for a customer in Japan and providing servicing and management for a wide range of pension and investment schemes in Europe and Asia-Pacific. State Streets ability to develop new products and services for both new and existing customers continues to set us apart.
State Street Global Advisors played an important role during the year in helping to enhance Asias bond markets as manager of the ABF Pan Asia Bond Index Fund, a key component of the Asian Bond Fund 2, an initiative developed by a group of 11 central banks and monetary authorities designed to provide governments with an additional source of credit. The fund invests in the local currency debt of eight countries in Asia, increasing investors access to this vital region of the world.
10%
28
increase in operating revenue
consecutive years of growth in
operating earnings per share
Product innovation continues to be a focus for us. State Street Global Advisors developed several new strategies including Global Alpha Plus, an innovative investment strategy designed to achieve consistent excess returns. It also launched a number of liability-driven investment strategies aimed at better matching assets to liabilities for pension funds. SSgAs growing active product array contributed to more than half of its net new revenue in 2005. With a renewed focus on exchange-traded funds, SSgA also launched nine new ETFs during the year, including the SPDR®Dividend, and saw strong growth in some of its innovative approaches such as the streetTRACKS®Gold Shares.
Our research and trading capabilities, including foreign exchange, equity execution, transition management and securities finance activities, also posted record results in 2005. Daily trading volume on FX Connect,® our multibank electronic trading system, surpassed $45 billion and State Street remained the unmatched leader in transition management, managing more than $380 billion in transitions during the year. Continued demand for our quantitative investment research led us to expand our successful State Street Investor Confidence Index®, which now includes regional views for Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.
As we advance our effort to serve customers in all the markets where they do business, we strengthened our presence in 2005 in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Hong Kong, and opened a representative office in Beijing, China. These markets will play an important role in our goal to increase revenue outside the United States.
Governance
State Street has made several recent changes to its corporate governance policies. First, we created a new chief compliance officer position charged with centralizing and overseeing State Streets compliance program. Our board of directors 13 out of 14 of whom qualify as independent under the New York Stock Exchange listing standards are now elected annually, eliminating three-year terms of the past. Shareholders also now annually ratify the appointment of our auditors, Ernst & Young LLP. In 2005, the board adopted a majority voting standard requiring a director or nominee who receives a withhold vote from the majority of outstanding shares in an uncontested election of directors to submit his or her resignation, to be considered by the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
Talent
Great companies are built around extraordinary individual execution. We must continue to invest in State Streets future by developing and leveraging our deep pool of talented professionals. Today, we are investing in our employees at a higher level than ever before. In 2005, we added more training, enhanced our salary and promotions process, and undertook several initiatives to move executives within State Street globally to provide a deeper bench of talent that supports our succession planning. One such example is the appointment in 2005 of Bill Hunt, an 11-year company veteran, to lead State Street Global Advisors.
State Street employees continue to give their time and money to improve the communities where we live and work. In a year of unprecedented natural disasters around the world, State Street colleagues offered their help and support to a variety of relief efforts, while continuing to support local charitable endeavors. More than a quarter of our workforce invested approximately 30,000 hours of volunteer time around the globe last year. Giving back is an inherent part of the State Street culture and a source of great corporate pride.
In 2005, I believe State Street became a stronger, more efficient and more focused company. As we move into 2006, Im encouraged that our business pipeline remains strong, and that were executing well against our strategic objectives. For 2006, we have once again set financial goals of achieving revenue growth between 8 and 12 percent, earnings per share growth between 10 and 15 percent and return on shareholders equity between 14 and 17 percent. We are currently targeting the middle of those ranges.
In my 18 months as State Streets chairman and CEO, conversations with our customers have assured me of one thing: When customers come to State Street, they get a value they cannot find anywhere else. We delivered that value in 2005, and I will keep working to build on that value for all of our stakeholders in the future.
Sincerely,
Ronald E. Logue
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer