London & New York, June 27, 2005 - Loan Pricing Corporation (LPC), a Reuters Company, today announced the addition of analytics on the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets, as well as further enhancements to its Secondary Market Intelligence™ (SMi™) platform.

SMi is a dynamic online tool that empowers buy and sell-side loan market professionals with the comprehensive information they need to make well-informed buy/sell/hold decisions. It enables users to monitor and analyze individual loans, portfolios, market sectors and overall market conditions. The product draws from several information sources including LPC's Global Mark-to-Market Pricing Services, which currently provide global cross asset coverage and monitoring of over 4,750 loans from over 1,700 active secondary issuers, as well as comprehensive Reuters bond and equity data.

Approximately 1,400 loans priced in the SMi database are being drawn from the fast growing LPC European Mark-to-Market Pricing Service. The new EMEA interface now enables market participants to easily monitor the performance of loans from an overall EMEA market perspective as well as filter down by key ratings and industry, and top leveraged and non-leveraged market segments. Information in each sector includes breaking news and weekly features providing market perspective from dedicated analysts and editorial staff, trend defining charts, bid highlights focusing on biggest par/distressed movers to help identify market movement, pipeline reports and other compelling data and analysis. Other functionalities include the ability to create and monitor customised portfolios and generate charts dynamically to help analyse portfolios geographically.

"The increasingly dynamic nature of the EMEA secondary loan market not only calls for instant access to mark-to-market pricing information on issuers, but also the ability to monitor the market from various angles before making critical buy and sell decisions. LPC's new EMEA SMi module will provide this much needed capability", said Mike Lavin, Senior Vice President from LPC. "In addition," he added, "the ability to use SMi to search for global assets and opportunities, as well as to monitor trends across geographic market segments, is a key value point for many of our customers on both the buy side and the sell side throughout the world."

U.S. loan prices on SMi are offered via LSTA/LPC Mark-to-Market Pricing, which is a partnership between LPC and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association. Additionally, prices for Asia-Pacific loans are provided through LPC's Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.

Additional enhancements to SMi include:

• Improved Company search - Search by full company name, partial company name and even alias names. Search results provide more robust information than ever before.
  
• Improved Watchlist functionality: From anywhere with SMi, users can seamlessly add a tranche to their online Watchlist or create a new Watchlist with one click of a button.
  
• New Global Coverage List: Provides users an at-a-glance view of ALL active Global, U.S. or EMEA debt instruments being tracked within SMi.
  
• New LIN Search: Search by Loan Identification Numbers (LINs), LPC's unique identifiers for loan instruments used worldwide for data monitoring and mapping.

The Syndicated Loan asset class is gaining more significance around the world and the number of institutions adding bank loans to their portfolios is on the rise, creating a vast requirement for secondary market news, data and analytics. LPC is committed to the growth and development of the credit markets worldwide and continually supports the enhancement of state-of-art products and services to meet the markets' needs. Apart from its global mark-to-market services and SMi tool, LPC offers a variety of other products and services to global credit market participants. These include Portfolio Intelligence, which provides market data, data management and performance analysis to advisors, analysts, investors, traders and managers of credit portfolios such as CDOs, Loan Funds, Hedge Funds, Total Return Swaps, Fund of Funds, etc. LPC also offers a series of online tools and publications providing access to market-leading news, data and analysis of loans and other credit assets.

For more information go to www.loanpricing.com

About Loan Pricing Corporation
Since 1985 Loan Pricing Corporation (LPC) (www.loanpricing.com), a Reuters Company, has provided market players around the world with the most complete and accurate news, data and analytics on the loan and credit markets. LPC's coverage spans the U.S., Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific via subsidiary Basis Point Publishing Limited. LPC's content is delivered via publications, on-line services and databases.

LPC is the premier global provider of credit market information and analysis as a result of its in-depth focus on the credit industry and development of state-of-the-art products and services for bankers, borrowers and investors.

Return to top

 | © 2005 Loan Pricing Corporation | Privacy Policy |