GFI and Lombard launch credit derivatives mark-to-market partnership

Inter-dealer broker GFI said today it has formed a new credit derivatives pricing alliance with Lombard Risk Systems, a London-based risk management technology company.

The partnership brings together GFI credit derivatives market prices with Lombard's ValuSpread Credit price verification service. The combined service will allowproduct controllers and risk managers to revalue credit default swap portfolios for mark-to market purposes, as well as verify pricing using complementary independent data sets, GFI said. In the arrangement, GFI will make part of its pricing data available through Lombard Risk's ValuSpread Credit service on a twice-monthly basis.

Although Lombard is not paying GFI for the information, Lombard clients will have to pay for the combined GFI-Lombard service, a GFI spokesman said.

Lombard launched its ValuSpread Credit service within the core dealer market in 1999 as the first price verification service for credit derivatives. ValuSpread Credit includes pricing information for more than 3,000 credits, and counts investment banks and end-users of credit derivatives among its clients.