Mark-it Partners puts it all on Red

Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are negotiating the sale of their credit derivatives reference entity database, Red, to UK credit risk data company Mark-it Partners.

Red acts as an electronic Domesday Book, cataloguing the legal existence of reference entities to ensure that both sides of a transaction can verify precisely which reference credit they are trading on. It was initially intended to be a non-profit project.

JPMorgan declined to comment on the reason for the sale, other than to reiterate the banks’ altruistic intentions for Red. The sale follows the failure of the three banks to convince other parties to adopt Red as a part of the industry’s