Markit Group Limited has acquired Chasen Enterprises, which provides modeling services for Collateralized Mortgage Obligations and Asset-Backed Securities.

Kevin Gould, Executive Vice President and Head of Data Products and Analytics at Markit, said: 'The acquisition of Chasen demonstrates Markit's commitment to support the structured finance markets, particularly with respect to the valuation of synthetic ABS instruments. The CDS of ABS market is growing rapidly and we are seeing an ever-increasing demand for benchmark data and independent valuations for this product.'

Markit will leverage Chasen's structured finance expertise to develop further its Reference Cashflow Database (RCD). RCD will launch later this year and will be used as the central monitoring and settlement platform for the CDS of ABS market. Markit's ABX calculator, which is used for settlement of the ABX index trades and is free to market participants, will also benefit from enhanced functionality.

Andrew Chasen, Founder and President of Chasen, stated: 'We are very excited about becoming a part of Markit, a firm that has helped to build liquidity in the sub-prime residential mortgage market through ABX. We look forward to contributing our modeling expertise in order to provide the investment community with the tools needed to analyze synthetic ABS."

Markit brought price transparency to the European ABS market with the launch of the first independent ABS pricing service in November 2005. In early 2006, Markit helped CDS IndexCo, the dealer consortium, launch ABX and CMBX, the synthetic ABS and CMBS indices. In April 2006, Markit launched a Portfolio Valuations service, spanning all OTC derivative products, to meet buy-side demand for independent valuations.

Chasen has been offering software and services to the structured finance sector since 1989, and the company has modeled over 18,000 CMO and ABS structures to date. The company is based in Peekskill, New York