International Index Company Appoints Markit Exclusive Calculation Agent for the ITraxx Indices
London and Frankfurt, 20 April 2006 - International Index Company Limited (IIC), the leading independent provider of credit derivative and fixed income indices, and Markit Group Limited ("Markit"), the leading industry source of independent pricing, reference data and valuations, today announced that they have signed an agreement governing the calculation and publication of IIC's iTraxx indices, the benchmark for the European and Asian credit markets.
Under the terms of the agreement, IIC appoints Markit as exclusive calculation agent for the iTraxx indices. This entails the collection of source data from leading financial institutions, quality control, and the calculation and publication of the official iTraxx daily index closing values. Index levels are made freely available to the market via various media and on the Markit and iTraxx websites - www.markit.com and www.itraxx.com. These published levels are the authorised, official iTraxx index levels.
IIC manages and administers the iTraxx credit derivative and iBoxx bond indices. The iTraxx indices were launched in 2004 in conjunction with a consortium of leading global investment banks. The rules-based indices comprise the most liquid names in the European and Asian credit markets, and consist of iTraxx Europe, iTraxx HiVol, iTraxx Crossover, iTraxx Asia ex-Japan, iTraxx Japan, iTraxx Australia, iTraxx SDI-75, and various sub-indices.
Markit provides independent pricing, reference data and valuations for the global financial and commodities markets, and receives data contributions from over 60 dealing firms. The company provides a weekly Tradeable Credit Fixing for three of the most liquid iTraxx indices - the 5-year Europe, HiVol and Crossover indices - via an online auction held in conjunction with Creditex.
David Mark, CEO of IIC, said: "The burgeoning growth of the credit derivatives market and the expected proliferation of structured products based on the iTraxx indices mean it is essential that index users can rely on robustly calculated index levels. That is why we have chosen to work with Markit as calculation agent, further reinforcing iTraxx's position as the benchmark credit derivatives indices."
Kevin Gould, Executive Vice President and Head of Data Products and Analytics at Markit, commented: "We are very pleased to have been offered this new and important role in the iTraxx indices, and we look forward to helping the IIC continue to deliver accurate, benchmark data for the credit derivatives market. This agreement confirms Markit's position as the key calculation agent across all synthetic indices and will aid operational efficiency right when the industry most needs it."
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For further information, please contact:
David Mark
CEO
International Index Company
Tel: +49 69 299 868 144
Email: david.mark@indexco.com
Teresa Chick
Director, Corporate Communications
Markit Group Limited
Tel: +44 (0)20 7260 2094
Email: teresa.chick@markit.com
About International Index Company Limited
International Index Company (IIC) was established in 2001 and is the leading independent provider of transparent, rules-based, multiple contributor bond and CDS indices. IIC manages and administers the iTraxx credit derivative indices, which have rapidly become the standard benchmarks in the growing credit markets. Over 35 major international financial institutions are licensed by IIC as iTraxx market makers. IIC's European iBoxx cash bond indices have been adopted as market standard and have been joined by Asian, US Dollar, inflation-linked and ABS index suites in recent months.
iTraxx and iBoxx indices and products based upon the indices have won awards from International Financing Review, International Fund Investment, Risk and Structured Finance International.
IIC is a joint venture of ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche B?, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
About Markit Group Limited
Markit Group Limited is the leading industry source of independent pricing, reference data 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.
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