iBoxx Launches Sterling Index Family - Indices For Gilts, Sub-Sovereigns, Collateralised And Corporate Bonds - Expansion Into Global Indices

iBoxx Limited, the international index provider, reported in London on Tuesday that it has launched its suite of Non-Gilt bond indices for the Sterling market. The newly launched indices cover Sub-Sovereigns, Collateralised and Corporate Bonds and join the existing real-time Gilts indices. With the new series of indices launched on March 22, iBoxx now spans the market of investment-grade bonds denominated in Euro and Sterling. In the medium term, iBoxx plans to offer global bond indices. The goal of iBoxx is to become the leading provider of bond indices.

The Sterling indices will be used as benchmarks by asset managers and investors. iBoxx supports bond trading in front offices with its real time bond prices and portfolio valuation in back offices with its end-of-day bond prices. The rules-based construction of the indices and the transparent pricing of the bonds by leading market participants lay the foundation for the development of financial derivatives on non-government bonds. All iBoxx indices are calculated as Price and Total Return indices. A full range of analytical values is published both for indices and on an individual security level. iBoxx Sterling indices have a base of 100 starting on 31 December 1997. The indices are rebalanced monthly.

iBoxx is a joint venture of ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Morgan Stanley, UBS Warburg and Deutsche Börse. iBoxx indices represent a new generation of easily accessible real-time bond indices, based on objective and transparent rules. The seven market-leading investment banks submit both their bid and ask quotes for each bond in the indices on a continuous basis to Deutsche Börse, which calculates the iBoxx consolidated prices and indices in real time and distributes them via its CEF (Consolidated Exchange Feed) price dissemination system and the Internet. By consolidating the bond prices from the contributors and through the rigorous quality controls of Deutsche Börse, the iBoxx products attain highest quality standards.