FT Interactive to incorporate CounterpartyLink's legal entity data

FT Interactive Data's business entity data service aims to help customers meet their requirements for compliance under regulations such as the European Commission's Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities (UCITS III) directive. CounterpartyLink's legal entity data will be combined with FT Interactive Data's issue level content and will be offered as an optional module within FT Interactive Data's FTS portfolio administration service.

CounterpartyLink, Ltd. collects and maintains global legal entity data using processes consistent with the stringent standards required by today's risk management and regulatory compliance legislation. Detailed information on legal entities, which include corporations, governments and funds, is collected in centres around the world, from primary sources and registration documents, with all data supported by an audit trail back to the source.

James Redfern, head of Distributor Management at CounterpartyLink, said: "We are pleased to be working with FT Interactive Data to provide business entity hierarchies and related data that will help users meet their UCITS III compliance requirements. Legal entity data is required by a number of critical business processes – particularly compliance. CounterpartyLink maintains audit trail information for every counterparty record, tracking the source of each piece of data. This audit information can be made available to customers to aid investigations and to understand best practices."

Bob Cumberbatch, FT Interactive Data's European business director, commented: "We are enhancing our new business entity data service with an additional source of legal entity data in order to provide our customers with the flexibility to choose which data content best fits their specific requirements. There has been considerable interest since we announced the service earlier this year and we expect this will further increase with the ending of the "grandfathering" period for funds that was created under the preceding UCITS directive in February 2007."

FT Interactive Data intends to offer its auto-matched, hand researched business entity data service via FTS on a per entity request basis. The service will be monitored on a daily basis.