The Sky Road Platform, based on the highly extensible, front-to-back office Calypso software solution, will integrate Markit's data feed, enabling portfolio and risk managers of credit-based strategies to accurately trade, model, and perform scenario-based risk analysis for credit derivatives.

The credit markets are growing exponentially, with credit derivatives experiencing an annual growth rate of 109%.* Portfolio and risk managers are increasingly in need of a sophisticated and comprehensive solution that can be rapidly deployed. The partnership between Sky Road and Markit will offer hedge fund managers access to a customizable solution with access to independent mark-to-market credit derivatives pricing. By implementing this robust credit derivatives portfolio and risk management solution, firms will save significant time and money.

The hosted Sky Road Platform will incorporate Markit's Credit Default Swap (CDS), iTraxx and Dow Jones CDX index pricing, together with Markit Reference Entity Database (RED) the industry standard for reference entity and reference obligation identifiers used through the CDS markets. Leveraging a built-in Markit data feed, the Sky Road Platform will be pre-configured with the credit derivatives market data required for utilizing Capital Structure Arbitrage, Fundamental, and other credit-based trading strategies and their diverse range of investment assets.

Mark Hunt, Director of Product Development at Markit commented, "The rapid growth and constantly changing landscape of the credit markets means that investment managers require access to integrated best-in-class data sets and a flexible cross-asset risk management solution. We are very pleased ted that Sky Road has integrated Markit's consensus credit data into its innovative ASP solution, a development which is certain to bring significant added value to our mutual customers."

John Borse, CEO of Sky Road, said, "We are very pleased to be partnering with Markit, the industry standard for credit derivatives data today in our ASP offering for credit funds. This new offering now enables funds to get a customizable and sophisticated hosted solution integrated with pre-eminent market data delivered via the Calypso-based Sky Road Platform. Hedge Fund customers of both firms will experience significantly reduced implementation time and costs."