Markit Group is launching a new pricing service for loan-only credit default swaps today. Tom Price, director of Markit Loans and LCDS, said the service will provide LCDS spreads on roughly 300 reference entities. Two-thirds are U.S. entities, the rest are European.
The service will provide an average spread from quotes provided by five dealers in the U.S. and five in Europe. The U.S. dealers are Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Contributing European dealers are Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. He expects the number of dealers providing quotes to increase. "We expect the number of contributors to increase fairly rapidly as far more dealers are interested in providing quotes and are working through the technical hurdles," said Price.
Dealers using the service will be able to obtain spreads on a particular reference entity when there is a minimum of three dealers quoting in that name. There is no minimum threshold for buysiders.