Dear Industry Colleague, In less than one month, the CDS contract traded globally and the conventions in North America are expected to change significantly. Collectively these changes are known as 'The CDS Big Bang' and the majority of the changes are expected to be implemented on April 8th, 2009. While the CDS Big Bang does call for fundamental modifications to the operational, trading, and legal frameworks of the CDS market, in many ways these changes simply entail the wider adoption of practices that already exist in the CDS market. Markit's "The CDS Big Bang: Understanding the Changes to the Global CDS Contract and North American Conventions" report is designed to assist market participants in the understanding of the pending changes. Additionally, the report outlines market tools that have been developed to assist in the preparation for the changes. Specifically, the report describes the ISDA CDS Standard Model, an open source industry standard model administered by Markit for valuing the new CDS contract. Finally, the report introduces the Markit CDS Converter, a free online tool for converting the new quote convention that will be found in future dealer runs to the required upfront payment. The CDS Big Bang report may be downloaded by clicking here. http://www.markit.com/information/products/cds/cds-page.html Kind regards, Tom Price Managing Director Global Head of Credit Markit Group 620 8th Avenue, 35th Floor NY, NY 10018 tom.price@markit.com www.markit.com