Charles River and Markit Team Up to Standardise Credit Derivative Workflow for Global Investment Managers

Burlington, MA and London, 12 April 2006 - Markit Group Limited (Markit), the leading industry source of independent pricing, reference data and valuations for the global financial and commodities markets, and Charles River Development (Charles River), a leading provider of front- and middle-office fixed income systems to the global investment management community, today announced an agreement to integrate Markit's credit pricing and reference entity data into the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS). The depth of integration will be such that Markit's data will be consistently mapped and readily accessible throughout Charles River IMS for mutual customers. Investment managers will, for the first time, benefit from a completely integrated credit derivative workflow within their order management system resulting in increased accuracy, efficiency and standardization of derivative trading with counterparties. The XML data feed, available in Version 8 of Charles River IMS, will initially include data such as Markit REDTM, iTraxx and Dow Jones CDX constituent data, credit curves and reference entity information.

"BlueBay focuses on alternative and fixed income credit funds and we are pleased with Charles River IMS's current and planned support for the trading, portfolio modelling and compliance monitoring of complex security types such as credit derivatives," said Simon Lumsdon, head of IT, BlueBay Asset Management. "The integration of the full suite of Markit data into Charles River IMS will extend our ability to execute credit derivative trading workflows efficiently. The use of the industry accepted RED code, entity name, reference obligation and credit index data will allow for standardised trading with our counterparties as well as improve our post-trade workflow by enabling electronic matching through DTCC Deriv/SERV. The partnership truly leverages the breadth of Markit's credit derivatives data with Charles River's comprehensive OMS workflows."

Markit REDTM (Reference Entity Data) is the industry standard for reference entity and reference obligation identifiers used throughout the credit default swap (CDS) markets, including on-line trading, standard documentation and trade settlement.

Charles River IMS, the market-leading front- and middle-office software suite for all security types, includes four components: Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modelling, Charles River Trader for order management and electronic trading, Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade and end-of-day compliance and Charles River Post-Trade for centralised management of trade matching, confirmation and settlement workflow. The system incorporates real-time FIX trading via the Charles River Network, a reliable, secure, private financial network.

Markit Group Limited is the leading industry source of independent pricing and valuations for the global financial and commodities markets. Markit has data contributed by over 60 dealing firms, and its services are used by 400 institutions globally. Areas of product expertise include OTC derivatives (credit, equity, FX, rates, inflation, energy, power, metals and structured products), corporate bonds, syndicated loans, dividend forecasting, and index and ETF management.

Markit has most recently brought price transparency to the European asset-backed securities market with the launch of the first independent ABS pricing service. Its position in the derivatives markets has been acknowledged by the industry with awards from Inside Market Data for Reference Data Provider of the Year 2006, and Company to Watch 2006; Risk Magazine for Trading Initiative of the Year 2006 (Credit Event Fixings); Structured Finance International's Editor's Award for Advancing Structured Finance 2006; International Securitisation Report's Editor's Award for Innovation 2005; International Financing Review's Innovation of the Year 2005 (Credit Event Fixings); Financial News' Best Derivatives Data Provider 2005; and Institutional Investor's Operations Management Award for Vendor of the Year 2005.

Charles River Development is a market-leading provider of software and services to 205 investment managers in the global institutional asset management, mutual fund, banking, pension, hedge fund, wealth management and insurance industries. The Charles River Investment Management System is a comprehensive front-to-middle-office software suite for all security types that includes Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modelling; Charles River Trader for order management and electronic trading; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade and end-of-day compliance; and Charles River Post-Trade for the centralised management of trade matching, confirmation and settlement workflow. The system incorporates real-time FIX-based electronic trading via the Charles River Network, a reliable, secure, private financial network.

Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service-oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Charles River combined state-of-the-art (Java, Microsoft .NET and Web Services) and industry-standard technologies to ensure Charles River IMS is open, flexible, scalable, functionally rich, and easy-to-use. Message-based APIs and exposed Web Services facilitate rapid systems integration.

The company offers many services to complement its software including implementation services and managed services (hosted and remote application management). Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in London, Melbourne, Paris, and Singapore.