MARKIT RECRUITS ABS SPECIALISTS

Markit Group Limited (“Markit”), the leading provider of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing to the global financial and commodities markets, today announced the appointment of James Savitsky and Thomas Geraghty as Directors within the company’s global Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) sales and product development teams.

Savitsky will coordinate Markit’s ABS sales effort globally, distributing the firm’s data and analytics services for the structured finance markets. He brings to Markit extensive experience in developing and distributing specialist products for the North American and European ABS markets, with particular expertise in the Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) market. Savitsky joins from Trepp where he headed sales and business development for the firm’s CMBS platform.

Geraghty joins Markit’s North American structured finance product development team, with a specific focus on data and the modelling of structured securities. Prior to joining Markit, Geraghty was a Managing Director at Wall Street Analytics where he was responsible for product development. Geraghty began his career as a mortgage-backed securities trader at JPMorgan where he spent six years structuring, pricing and marketing new issues.

Savitsky and Geraghty will both be based in New York. These appointments reflect Markit’s commitment to providing the structured finance markets with data and analytics to improve transparency and efficiency. Last week, Markit acquired ABSReports, an ABS deal reporting service. In August 2006, the company acquired Chasen Enterprises, a provider of deal modelling for structured securities. Last year also saw Markit launch ABX and CMBX, the widely traded synthetic ABS and CMBS indices, in conjunction with the dealer consortium CDS IndexCo.

Michael Rushmore, Executive Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing at Markit, said: “Jim is widely recognised as an industry thought-leader with deep customer relationships that have been developed over more than 10 years of experience in the ABS market. We are delighted that Jim has joined the Markit team to help shape our customer-focused vision for the future of structured finance services.”

Kevin Gould, Executive Vice President and Head of Data Products and Analytics at Markit, commented: “Tom is a valuable addition to our ABS specialist team. He brings 17 years of structured finance experience to Markit, and will help us meet the burgeoning demand for efficient, accurate means to track and analyse the global ABS market, both cash and synthetic.”

Markit’s services are used by almost 1,000 institutions to enhance trading operations and reduce risk.