GERMANY – David Mark has been appointed chief executive officer of iBoxx, the new fixed income indices joint venture company between ABN Amro, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Morgan Stanley, UBS Warburg and Deutsche Börse.

The iBoxx euro index family is already available, with the sterling family pencilled in to follow soon. They are disseminated along with the underlying bond prices by the Deutsche Börse, where the initial calculations and checking of the prices of securities is initially consolidated, having been supplied by the members of the consortium.

Mark will join iBoxx on 15 October from his current position of managing director of the Frankfurt-based, Deutsche Bank-owned performance measurement company WM Company.

iBoxx, based in Frankfurt, was established specifically to introduce and market the iBoxx range of fixed income indices, which, says Mark, signal “a new era of rules-based, replicable and continuously priced benchmarks for the fixed income market”.
According to Mark, there has been a lack of transparency in the bond market for a long time, and existing indices are the exclusive domain of individual proprietors. “This situation is in need of change, especially since assets are increasingly managed globally and markets are becoming more transparent,” he comments.