Moody’s Corp. today announcedthat it has acquired BQuotes, a provider of price discovery tools andend-of-day pricing services for a wide range of fixed income securities. Theacquisition enhances Moody’s product offering in the fixed-income valuationsand pricing arena, augmenting the firm’s efforts to deliver tools thatfacilitate price transparency in global fixed income markets, especially forcomplex structured securities and derivative instruments.
BQuotes’ product line will beintegrated into Moody’s Analytics’ suite of pricing and valuation products,which include model-based fair value estimates, evaluated pricing, and observedpricing.
“There is growing marketdemand for tools that enable credit market participants to better value debtsecurities,” said Gus Harris, senior managing director of Moody’s NewProducts Group. “BQuotes will provide both our evaluators and ourcustomers with critical information on a wide range of fixed income securities,and we believe this will be an important source of competitive differentiationfor Moody’s.”
Ray McDaniel, CEO of Moody’s,described the acquisition as a “response to market demand for alternativeindependent sources of fixed income valuation.”
The acquisition of BQuotesextends Moody’s product suite and positions the company to offer a completerange of fixed income valuation services. Late last year, Moody’s introducedmodel-based valuations for structured securities through Credit Values DCV, adiscounted cashflow valuation service that provides an independent assessmentof the intrinsic value of such securities.
The company’s recent acquisition ofMergent’s corporate and municipal bond pricing services expanded Moody’spricing initiative to evaluated pricing, while BQuotes further broadens Moody’soffering to price discovery tools and observed pricing services.