Justification for Award of Single Source Purchase Order to Markit North America

The SEC requires a service that will deliver credit default swap (CDS) reference data, including information on entities, obligations, corporate actions and credit events. The data will be delivered through the Wharton WRDS platform and will include the following key features: (1) unique identification codes for CDS reference entities, (2) unique identification codes for pairs of CDS reference entities and reference obligations, (3) information on the legal relationship between a reference entity and a reference obligation, (4) verified corporate events (e.g., corporate actions, CDS succession events, credit events) that potentially affect the pricing and trading of CDSs, (5) unique identification codes for CDS indexes, and (6) verified information on CDS indexes and the constituents of CD