S&P Capital IQ Launches Multiple Approach Bond Pricing and Valuation offering

LONDON and NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- S&P Capital IQ Valuation Services today announced the launch of a new valuation and pricing offering providing an independent and transparent view of multiple pricing and valuation approaches across a single issue, including executed trade prices, evaluated prices, and newly developed risk adjusted modeled valuations.

An approximate universe of 22,500 fixed-rate corporate and government bonds in 33 currencies is included at launch. This will be expanded over the short term with additional Asian domestic bonds, illiquid securities and variable/floating rate bonds.

Developed to aid identification requirements of IFRS accounting standards and to manage the regulatory capital requirements expected from Basel III, S&P Capital IQ's Valuation Services offering addresses the market need for greater valuation transparency in accounting, regulatory, risk and performance measurement from the front to the back office.

The multiple valuation and pricing offering combines trade prices, evaluated prices and risk-adjusted model valuation. It also exposes the underlying valuation methodology as well as the associated input credit default swap prices, swap and government benchmark curves.  A transparency and data timeliness indicator based on the underlying drivers behind the valuation and pricing calculations is also provided.

"A key business objective for S&P Capital IQ is to help investors and risk managers examine valuation risk and uncertainty and identify dislocated relationships between risks relating to price and value in their fixed income portfolios," said Peter Jones, Senior Director, Valuation Services, S&P Capital IQ. "Combining valuation and pricing approaches in a single valuation capability is an important step in realizing this goal."

By adding transparency and context to the valuation process, the new offering helps risk managers and pricing professionals across the front, middle and back office to better distinguish between price and value, market and credit risk, and pricing outliers. This helps with alpha generation, risk mitigation processes and cost control.

The new model valuation content will be available alongside evaluated and trade price content on the web and through a customizable Excel-based API plug-in, allowing clients to meet specific workflow requirements and embed pricing and valuation data alongside S&P Capital IQ's broad enterprise data content.

About Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations

S&P Capital IQ Valuation Services are provided by Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations, Inc. (SPSE), a wholly owned subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. SPSE provides independent fixed-income evaluations of over 3 million securities.  It also distributes to its client base pricing data and equity pricing services of other unaffiliated firms.  In total, SPSE provides coverage for more than four million global securities.  Prices of firms other than those of SPSE are the responsibility of those firms and not SPSE and are produced under the firms' methodologies and policies and procedures, not those of SPSE.  Analytic services and products provided by Standard & Poor's are the result of separate activities designed to preserve the independence and objectivity of each analytic process.  Standard & Poor's has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of non-public information received during each analytic process. Standard & Poor's and its affiliates provide a wide range of services to, or relating to, many organizations, including issuers of securities, investment advisers, broker-dealers, investment banks, other financial institutions and financial intermediaries, and accordingly may receive fees or other economic benefits from those organizations, including organizations whose securities or services they may recommend, rate, include in model portfolios, evaluate or otherwise address. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com.

About S&P Capital IQ

S&P Capital IQ, a brand of the McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE:MHP), is a leading provider of multi-asset class data, research and analytics to institutional investors, investment advisors and wealth managers around the world. We provide a broad suite of capabilities designed to help track performance, generate alpha, identify new trading and investment ideas, and perform risk analysis and mitigation strategies. Through leading desktop solutions such as Capital IQ, Global Credit Portal and MarketScope Advisor desktops; enterprise solutions such as S&P Securities Evaluations, Global Data Solutions, and Compustat; and research offerings including Leveraged Commentary & Data, Valuation & Risk Strategies and S&P Equity Research, S&P Capital IQ sharpens financial intelligence into the wisdom today's investors need.

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For important disclosures about SPSE, pleasevisit http://www.standardandpoors.com/regulatory-affairs/securities-evaluations/en/us.

Contacts:
Peter Jones, Senior Director, Valuation Services, S&P Capital IQ
[email protected]
+44 207 176 7441

Media Contacts:
Frederick Duff Gordon, Moorgate Communications
[email protected]
+44 (0)20 3774996

SOURCE Standard & Poor's