A securities depository receipt is another way of referring to a depositary receipt: a negotiable certificate, issued by a bank, that represents a set number of shares or other securities of a foreign issuer and trades on a market outside the issuer's home country. The main entry explains how these instruments are created, priced and cancelled.
The usual spelling in the industry and in programme documents is "depositary", which refers to the depositary bank that issues the receipts. "Depository" appears as a variant, sometimes by association with a securities depository, the institution that holds securities in book-entry form. The two should not be confused: the receipts are issued by a commercial bank acting as depositary, while the underlying shares are held for it by a custodian bank in the issuer's home market.
The best-known forms are the American depositary receipt, which trades in US dollars in the United States, and the global depositary receipt, which is typically listed in London or Luxembourg.