Mark-it Partners Joins with CUSIP to Develop Numbering System for Project RED

London - 22 September 2003 - Mark-it Partners Limited, a leading credit derivatives information provider, today announced that it has formed a partnership with the CUSIP Service Bureau, to develop a numbering system which will be an integral part of Project Red.

The CUSIP Service Bureau, the world's largest and most respected national numbering agency, has created two sets of unique alphanumeric codes, known as CUSIP-linked Entity MIP codes ("CLIPs"). A set of 6-character codes is used to represent credit default swap reference entities, and a set of 9-character codes is used to represent pairs of reference entities and reference obligations. These codes provide a very quick and unambiguous method of identifying entities and obligations in default swap trade confirmations, which would otherwise have to be done by means of full legal name and bond description.

The database currently contains codes and full names for over 1,000 reference entities traded in the credit derivatives market, and Mark-it Partners intends to double this to 2,000 by year-end.

Jim Taylor, CEO of CUSIP said, "We are very pleased to join forces with Mark-it Partners in this initiative, which marks our first venture into the credit derivative arena. As credit derivatives become ever more widely used, it is vital for the market?s development that it moves towards standardisation such that settlement of a derivative trade eventually becomes no harder than settlement of a bond trade. As the use of bond CUSIPs removes any doubt from bond settlement, so this invention of a derivative entity numbering system will speed the move towards matching, settlement and clearing through centralised systems, and RED will increasingly become a requirement for credit derivative transactions."

Tom McNerney, director of operations and analytics at Mark-it Partners, noted the importance of getting the numbering system: "It is essential that traders in the credit markets can easily and unequivocally agree on the same reference entity and reference obligations. The existence of a simple and concise numbering system makes this so much easier to do than pure textual information, and CUSIPs experience in this field made them the natural choice of partner when it came to codifying the information in RED"

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About CUSIP

The CUSIP Service Bureau, operated by Standard & Poor's for the American Bankers Association, exists for the primary purpose of uniquely identifying issuers and issues of financial instruments within a standard framework, and disseminating this data to the financial marketplace via various media. CUSIP numbers and standardized descriptions are used by virtually all sectors of the financial industry, and are critical for the accurate and efficient clearance and settlement of securities and other financial instruments as well as back-office processing. The CUSIP Service Bureau seeks to assign unique numbers and standardized descriptions in a timely and accurate manner, using its best efforts to use primary or reliable sources of information. For more information, please visit: www.cusip.com

About Mark-it Partners

Launched in February 2003, Mark-it Partners Ltd is an independent company offering the world's first daily service for pricing credit derivatives and cash credit instruments, providing credit data to any market participant for the first time.

Mark-it Partners contributing Partners include ABN Amro, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, TD Securities, JPMorgan Chase Bank, and UBS. These banks feed current and historical credit data into the Mark-it system on a daily basis, facilitating better decision-making and credit risk management within banks' credit operations.