Markit and Creditex successfully carried out four industry wide credit default swap (CDS) portfolio compression runs in North America and Europe during the week ended October 31, 2008.
Markit and Creditex were selected by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to provide infrastructure to support commitments made by major market participants to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
CDS contracts concerned industrial, energy and utilities companies as well as European sovereigns at a total of 62 reference entities with a gross notional reduction of 44%, or $150 billion across all participating counterparties. To October 24, 2008 gross notional value formed $200 billion.
Markit and Creditex run portfolio compression cycles on a regular basis to compress the most actively traded single name CDS contracts systematically across all major sectors. Since August 27, 2008 Markit and Creditex conducted 13 compression runs resulting in a total gross notional reduction in excess of $550 billion.
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