In early 98 the Gartner Group suggested that the global cost of up grading for the Euro will cost business and goverment around $645 billion, wheras Y2K was predicted by Gartner to cost $600 billion. According to the Australian paper the Sydney Morning Herald June 9th titled - Is Australia ready for the Euro?

The introduction of the Euro is estimated to compare with up to 150% of Year 2000 overall remediation processes, with less than half the time frame to accomplish it in.

One of my sources (a principal EMU consultant to the European financial industry) (sorry no names allowed) in responce to some questions I asked him stated in his responce to me - "There are rumors in the market that some relatively high profile banks worryingly behind on their EMU (european monetary union)projects. In June we asked the bank of England to reveal what it knows and provide some hard evidence to support its claim that the UK banks will be ready. We are still waiting. Why? Could it be that the news is bad?

I wonder what the other banks would have to say? My source goes on to say "A massive worlwide failure to prepare for EMU would have necessitated a hard choice for European politicians - press on and risk a banking crisis, or delay the project. Y2K is not my area but I'm sure the effect would be similar. Just remember that if we don't servive EMU there won't be a Y2K problem"

Summary - the Euro dollar (EMU) project is estimated to cost 45 billion dollars more than Y2K, the remediation process is set at 150% of the Year 2000 process, there is no indication that any major bank is ready, the Euro is set to decend on the global financial markets January 1999, if the major players are not complient within 4 months Y2K wont happen, as we would have already gone down the gurgler. Have a nice day

Timothy J Wilbur

-- Timothy J Wilbur (timkaz@nor.com.au), August 07, 1998

Answers

This is amusing. Our company is a multi-national company which deals in many currencies. With each expense figure we store, we store a corresponding currency code. When we want to convert to a different currency, we look up the exchange rate based on the currency code. All we have to do is add a new currency code and the exchange rates for it. No sweat.

-- Amy Leone (aleone@amp.com), August 11, 1998.