Markit buys Chasen as part of ABS push

Markit has acquired New York-based analytics firm Chasen Enterprises as part of an effort to strengthen its structured finance division.

Chasen specialises in modelling collateralised mortgage obligations (CMO) and asset-backed securities (ABS). “In the synthetic products space, we decided that we need to own and control critical parts of infrastructure. It is a company that has an excellent reputation and gives representation on how deals payout in the future,” said Ben Logan, a New York-based director in ABS division of the London-based pricing, valuation and data provider.

According to Logan, Chasen’s expertise will be instrumental in Markit’s pricing of future cash flows from credit default swaps (CDS) on ABS. The firm plans to launch a central monitoring and settlement platform for CDS of ABS called Reference Cashflow Database within two months.

The platform will, Markit claims, help standardise the process of identifying and calculating the effects of events, such as interest rate shortfalls or writedowns, and their settlement procedures.

Markit also plans to hire about 30 more people specialising in ABS by the end of 2007.