On the complete boundedness of the Schur block product

We give a Stinespring representation of the Schur block product, say (*), on pairs of square matrices with entries in a C*-algebra as a completely bounded bilinear operator of the form: A:=(a_{ij}), B:= (b_{ij}): A (*) B := (a_{ij}b_{ij}) = V* pi(A) F pi(B) V, such that V is an isometry, pi is a *-representation and F is a self-adjoint unitary. This implies an inequality due to Livshits and an apparently new one on diagonals of matrices. ||A (*) B|| \leq ||A||_r ||B||_c operator, row and column norm; - diag(A*A) \leq A* (*) A \leq diag(A*A).