Europe Arab Bank (EAB) will initially subscribe to the standard Version 1.3 of the product and look to upgrade to the new Version 1.4 in the next few months. Version 1.4 of the product will not only aid compliance with today's regulatory environment, but also forthcoming legislation such as the Third (EU) Money Laundering Directive and MiFID.

As a new, wholly-owned subsidiary of Arab Bank plc, EAB provides a niche service to a growing number of European companies and individuals wishing to transact with the MENA region. The Bank currently has offices in key European money centres, including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Vienna and Rome and in January 2007 Standard & Poor's Ratings Services assigned its 'A-'long-term and 'A-2' short-term counterparty credit ratings to Europe Arab Bank plc.

EAB selected CounterpartyLink for the company's depth and breadth of entity coverage and its ability to work closely with the Bank to meet its expanding requirements over time. As the Bank continues to develop in Europe, it anticipates a growing need for high quality legal entity data to support its business operations, as well as the compliance requirements related to Know Your Client, MiFID and other market regulations.

"We will use CounterpartyLink as the key source of standardised legal entity reference data for our operations and in our compliance department. As CounterpartyLink's product is a high quality, and most importantly, auditable source of information, it allows us to rely on a trusted partner to collect and maintain this data, which in turn will allow us to concentrate internal resources on higher value activities," said Philip Hindley, Head of Compliance at Europe Arab Bank.

Christoph Lammersdorf, Managing Director of CounterpartyLink, said, "CounterpartyLink is uniquely well-positioned to provide EAB with the support and expertise it requires as the Bank builds its presence in Europe, and we are very pleased to be selected. As the leading supplier of global legal entity data, we have the experience and multi-language expertise to help ensure that all data is collected, verified, maintained and audited in line with the highest possible standards."

CounterpartyLink provides multiple fields of validated data for each entity, covering name and address details, corporate hierarchies, registration and regulator details and a variety of other standard identifiers, including the SWIFT BIC code. Every field is linked back to an original public filing or web page, providing a complete audit trail back to source for each value displayed.