Exchange Data International and CounterpartyLink Announce Integration

05 April 2006 – London – Exchange Data International (EDI) and CounterpartyLink^TM have joined forces to provide an integrated data service, designed to save financial institutions time and money and help them comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) regulations. Under the agreement, clients will be able to receive EDI’s premier corporate actions and reference data linked to and supplemented by legal entity data provided by CounterpartyLink.

Financial institutions need accurate, consistent and complete reference data so they can increase efficiency through straight-through processing and shorten the settlement cycle. They also must have quick access to corporate actions announcements that can affect securities holdings. To this end, institutions worldwide depend on high-quality international securities administration reference data from EDI.

But EDI’s reference data becomes even more powerful when combined with CounterpartyLink’s legal entity data service. CounterpartyLink provides clients with cleansed, auditable and continuously-updated legal entity reference data from corporations, funds and fund managers, financial institutions and governments.

CounterpartyLink centres located in the US, China, Romania, Egypt and India collect the data from public primary or secondary sources such as company registry authorities, regulatory organisations and stock exchanges. Then it is verified and maintained using rigorous, documented processes and procedures that comply with current regulations.

Issuer and complex legal hierarchy data are monitored continuously for corporate actions and other changes that might have an impact on investors’ portfolios. The names of the parents and subsidiaries, as well as the ownership classification of the entities, are also included in the data set.

"With this agreement, EDI’s corporate actions and reference data can now be supplemented with linked access to a data source designed to lessen the burden of collecting and maintaining legal entity data," said Jonathan Bloch, Managing Director of EDI. "We view this as a great advantage and a significant new service that will help our clients in their compliance and data management efforts."

James Redfern, Head of Distributor Relations at CounterpartyLink, added: "Integrating EDI’s reference data service with CounterpartyLink’s legal entity data service makes sense and is a distinct advantage for both companies’ clients. We look forward to working with EDI to deliver a powerful solution to financial institutions worldwide."

Contacts:

Jennifer Massing
MassingPR, LLC for EDI
Tel: +1 917 293 2405
jenm@massingpr.com

James Redfern
Head of Distributor Management
Tel: +44 (0)20 7664 2904
james.redfern@counterpartylink.com

About Exchange Data International (www.exchange-data.com)

Established in 1994, Exchange Data International is the premier provider of quality and accurate international securities administration reference data. The company provides back office solutions and securities data to most of the major brokerage houses, custodians, and data vendors internationally. In the decade since it was founded, EDI has garnered a worldwide reputation for high quality and accuracy of its international securities administration data. EDI has won acclaim for its innovations and rapid deployment of state-of-the-art technologies. This has allowed the company to expand both its product range and its geographic coverage, while retaining its original advantages as a lean company with low overheads that listens to its clients and responds to their needs and concerns in a flexible, innovative and cost- effective manner. EDI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Information Publishing Plc.

About CounterpartyLink (www.counterpartylink.com)

CounterpartyLink, Ltd. provides global legal entity data, collected and maintained with processes designed to be consistent with the stringent standards driven by today's risk management and regulatory compliance requirements.  Detailed information on legal entities including corporations, governments and funds is collected in centres around the world, using primary sources and registration documents, with all data supported by an audit trail back to the source. CounterpartyLink employs rigorous, documented procedures to collect and verify all data and continually updates the information for corporate actions and other events. 

For more information regarding EDI solutions please visit www.exchange-data.net .

Please contact us if you have any questions or wish to discuss your data needs.