Bear Stearns and UBS Securities are planning to release information on collateralized debt obligations they underwrite to Intex Solutions, a third-party analytical platform, according to CDO officials from the firms. The moves would follow those by other bulge bracket banks, including Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia Securities, which in recent months have each begun to post on Intex transaction documentation on CDOs they bring to market. The widespread posting of deals on Intex, which traders say has emerged as the clear leader in the field ahead of others such as Wall Street Analytics, is credited with increasing transparency and liquidity in the CDO market because it allows investors and rival dealers access to information that had previously been accessible only from a CDO's underwriter. "They see that everyone else has their deals on Intex, and it's something they can't ignore anymore."
Traders say the move is most significant for Bear Stearns--considered the biggest trader of secondary CDOs--because it has apparently resisted the Intex bandwagon so far by coming up with a proprietary CDO valuation model of its own. Adam Siegel, an associate director in CDO trading at Bear Stearns, says the firm currently models specific tranches of its own deals using Intex's methods if customers request it, and is moving toward putting all of its documentation on the platform, though he cautions it is a long process because of compliance reasons. Keith Grimaldi, a director in CDO trading at UBS, says the firm is in discussions with Intex about getting its information up. He adds it has not done so yet because UBS was not an active underwriter of CDOs prior to the hiring of a new CDO origination team earlier this year. Mike Rosenberg and Jeff Herlyn, co-heads of the bank's global CDO origination effort, joined this spring from J.P. Morgan Securities (BW, 3/10).