UK credit derivatives data firm Market-it Partners has launched its Reference Entity Database (RED) service.
Mark-it Partners won the mandate to provide the RED service earlier this year from Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, who jointly founded the database in order to improve liquidity, transparency and standardisation in the credit derivatives market.
The three investment banks have now agreed to sell the database to Mark-it Partners and have taken an equity stake in the firm. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. Mel Gunewardena, managing director at Goldman Sachs, says: "Given the rapid growth of the database, we felt it was time to pass the torch to a trusted third party for whom growing and maintaining Red would be a core business."
In addition, JPMorgan will begin contributing credit default swap prices to the service as well as certain prices for credit cash instruments. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs signed data services agreements with Mark-it Partners in December 2002.
The vendor says by year end the RED database will enable market participants to precisely match approximately 2000 reference entities in Europe, the US and Asia with associated benchmark bonds, or reference obligations.