Markit Dividends And Index Management Extends U.S. Dividend Coverage To S&P 1500

London and New York, 9 February 2005 - Markit Dividends and Index Management, formerly DaDD and now part of Markit Group Limited ("Markit"), today announced that, in response to client demand, it has substantially increased its coverage of US dividends to include the S&P 400 in addition to the S&P 500 stocks and will release the S&P 600 on May 1, 2005.

Markit Dividends, recognised as the de facto standard for dividend information, provides four-year forecasts of the precise dividend amounts and ex dividend dates for 4,600 of the world's leading equities. These forecasts are a critical input for equity derivative models, indexation, income funds and derivative margining systems.

Markit uses fundamental analysis of each US stock to forecast the dividends, and back testing reveals an accuracy of over 85% in forecasting the precise dividend amounts and ex-dividend dates.

In addition, Markit's Index Management Service consolidates, validates, and updates the constituents of over 8,000 global equity indices and ETFs on a daily basis. Markit is the only provider of both dividend forecasts and index data through a single XML feed.

Markit's customer base includes global investment banks such as Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Calyon; specialist derivatives traders and market makers such as Timber Hill (part of Interactive Brokers Group); asset managers such as Barclays Global Investors; and derivatives exchanges such as Euronext.Lliffe.

John Price, Managing Director and Head of Markit Dividends and Index Management said, "We have further extended our service to forecast US dividends at the specific request of our customers, addressing the fact that there are very few brokers' analysts that provide even annualised DPS forecasts, let alone the degree of detail and accuracy which we do. Over the past year, there have been numerous instances where our U.S. customers have gained a distinct edge over their competitors by using our forecasts."

Joe Fernley, Global Head of Equity Linked Technology at Merrill Lynch said "Predicting forthcoming US dividends has become much harder over the past two or three years. The Markit Dividend service helps our traders with quality information and enables us to spend more time focusing on transaction critical dividends."

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About Markit

Markit is the leading industry source for asset valuation data and services supporting independent price verification and risk management in global financial and energy markets. Founded in 2001, the company is an independent enterprise with which the world's leading financial institutions and energy traders work strategically to create price transparency. Today, Markit enjoys the sponsorship of 13 financial institutions who manage assets in excess of $10 trillion, and data contribution relationships with over 45 dealing firms. Markit has designed, launched and acquired over 20 financial data services which are now used by over 300 institutions globally. Areas of product expertise and service include an independent valuation perspective on credit default swaps, syndicated loans and OTC derivatives (credit, equity, FX, rates, energy, power, metals and structured products), as well as dividend forecasting and index and ETF management.