Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, has signed a strategic agreement to distribute Euroclear Bank's extensive Eurobond reference data, giving market participants direct access to information on more than 200,000 Eurobonds.
Euroclear Bank is the world's largest provider of cross-border settlement and related services for bond, equity, derivative and fund transactions.
Markit will be responsible for marketing and distributing Euroclear Bank's Eurobond data, allowing customers to make better informed decisions on an intra-day basis. Markit will also optimise the data by cross referencing them against its own entity and industry sector identifiers, and a wide range of additional identifiers. This will enable Markit's customers to process the data efficiently and support their Eurobond trading activity.
Armins Rusis, Managing Director and Co-Head of Information at Markit, said: "By combining Euroclear Bank's extensive data set with our expertise in aggregating, validating and distributing complex information, we will be able to deliver comprehensive and timely solutions for the Eurobond market. This underpins our goal to bring greater transparency and efficiency to the global financial markets."
Pierre Slechten, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at Euroclear Bank, said: "Working together with an established financial information services company like Markit to share Eurobond data will increase the availability of Eurobond information to the global capital markets. While Euroclear Bank's clients will continue to have access to all data directly from Euroclear Bank, we believe our global distribution partnership with Markit will provide unique added value to Eurobond issuers and investors alike."
As the leading international central securities depository and numbering agent for the €8 trillion Eurobond market, Euroclear Bank is the primary source of Eurobond reference data - including issuer details, currency and maturity - as well as income and corporate action information - including coupon rates, bondholder meeting dates and payment dates.
This is a significant addition to Markit's range of multi-asset class reference data producroducts, which includes Markit RED, the reference entity and obligation database for the credit default swap market. The service is expected to be available before the end of the year.