With the addition of the Compustat Global Database, Standard & Poor's Backtester includes historical data on more than 17,500 non-U.S. and non-Canadian companies, in addition to the historical data on Compustat's 65,000 securities in its North America database. Introduced in January 2007, Backtester is a flexible and easy-to-use desktop application that enables asset managers to test simulated investment strategies back in time.

"With the incorporation of the global company data from Compustat, our clients can now backtest their investment theories in an application without borders," said JP Tremblay, Standard & Poor's Senior Director of Product Development for Compustat. "Backtester's global real-world data, speed and ease-of-use provide the right combination for the demands of quantitative investment professionals."

The new Point-in-Time data available through Research Insight, which is the analytics engine for Backtester, provides a consistent view of historical financial data the way it appeared at the end of any given month. Researchers will have access to a monthly snapshot of companies' reporting and restatement history, answering the questions "What did investors know?" and "When did they know it?" This allows for greater control by researchers who perform historical quantitative analyses and long-term backtesting, specifically when focusing on between period statistics like sales growth, profitability growth and sales momentum, or any four-quarter trailing calculations.