Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations, Inc. stands ready to lend its assistance and expertise in the industry as it moves towards a more real-time environment. In order to address the industry need for timely reporting of fixed income settlement data, Standard & Poor’s is offering to provide the settlement date and settlement status information to all market participants. This information is used to prepare a when-issued trade for settlement. In November 2004 Standard & Poor’s launched its near real-time Securities DataManager in support of Real Time Trade Match (RTTM). “It is our position that the timeliness and contemporaneous delivery of new issue information can be improved,” said Frank Ciccotto, Senior Vice President of Standard & Poor’s.
Standard & Poor’s data collection and data management processes include the active procurement of settlement data through the effort of contacting underwriters, financial advisors and issuers of newly issued deals. Additionally, Standard & Poor’s provides quality assurance, value added interpretive analysis and data reconciliation from multiple sources to report the most complete data on newly issued securities. “We welcome the opportunity to work with the dealer community to further streamline the flow of information in the marketplace, and to automate the receipt of new issue information submitted by the dealer community,” said Frank Ciccotto.