The core competencies of the new Valuation & Risk Strategies group include the following:

-- Independent Securities Evaluations: Standard & Poor's Securities approximately three million hard-to-price fixed-income and structured finance securities daily.

-- Valuation Scenario Services: Launched in 2009 to address illiquid securities analysis with intrinsic valuation, Valuation Scenario Services offers transparent assessments of structured finance portfolios under a range of different assumptions and economic scenarios.

-- Market, Credit & Risk Strategies: An independent research team that combines market and credit risk analysis to better understand the relationship between asset price and risk, Market, Credit & Risk Strategies helps investors determine the degree to which they are being compensated for the risks they are taking.

"There are many ways to measure risk, but if the recent financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that asset price is the great equalizer in the fixed income markets," said Lou Eccleston, Executive Managing Director, Standard & Poor's Fixed Income Risk Management Services. "By combining our market-leading fixed income price evaluation and market research assets into a single unit, we are giving investors an innovative new perspective that will expand the vernacular used to describe credit and fixed income risk. Now, investors will have an independent and transparent assessment of how well they are being compensated by the market for the risk they are exposed to in their portfolios."

Available to Standard & Poor's customers globally through the S&P Global Credit Portal, the Valuation & Risk Strategies group resources incorporate a wide range of research, data and analytics. Offerings will address securities throughout the US, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions.