CMS Announces General Release of BondEdge Version 4.2.

Business Editors

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2000

Capital Management Sciences, a division of Data Broadcasting Corporation (Nasdaq: DBCC), today announced the general release of version 4.2 of its BondEdge fixed income portfolio analytics system. The latest version offers new advanced tools for mortgage-backed security prepayment analyses, additional global portfolio reporting features, a new model for interest rate caps and floors, eurodollar futures and a new high yield appraisal report for non-investment grade holdings.

Prepayment Model Scaling Tool

BondEdge now offers a modeling tool that allows clients to modify the system's fixed rate mortgage prepayment model, either by specifying a global "scaling" factor or by changing individual parameters within the model. Clients can also use this feature to create new models for collateral types not supported by CMS. This feature gives BondEdge users the flexibility to apply their own prepayment expectations to mortgage-backed securities analyses or to perform sensitivity analyses for risk management purposes, at both the security and portfolio level.

"The ability to express individual prepayment views or stress test assumptions in the CMS model are significant tools addressing the challenges of mortgage prepayment modeling in fixed income management," explained Teri Geske, senior vice president of product development at CMS.

Global Portfolio Analysis

To meet the needs of the growing number of U.S. portfolio managers who invest in non-US$ fixed income securities, CMS continues to enhance BondEdge's global portfolio capabilities. BondEdge now offers a flexible tool that allows a portfolio manager to assign countries and/or currencies to "blocs," which can then be used to view a portfolio's combined exposure to a group of countries and/or currencies (such as the Eurozone countries, Latin America, Emerging Market, etc.) in a way that meets each manager's needs. For example, clients could create an "Asia/Pacific Rim" Country bloc that includes or excludes Japan, group a portfolio's European exposure to EMU vs. non-EMU countries, and create an Emerging Market bloc consisting of their own list of countries for that category. Clients can also create Currency blocs that will help them to monitor a portfolio's exchange rate risk for currencies that tend to move together.

"We designed this feature so that a client's definition of Country and Currency blocs automatically applies to any global index in BondEdge to which the portfolio is compared," Geske noted.

These Country and Currency blocs have been incorporated into BondEdge's Global Distributions report, which has been revised to show the gross exposure to each currency, the effect of any currency hedges, the net exposure after taking any hedges into account, and the percentage of each currency in the portfolio that has been hedged away.

Portfolio managers can also now price non-$ securities in BondEdge by specifying a spread to one of BondEdge's Global Government Yield Curves. This system provides term structures for over 20 major currencies from Financial Times Information, and clients can add their own term structures as needed.

Derivatives: New Caps and Floors Model and Eurodollar Futures

As derivatives have become an important tool for interest rate risk management for many institutions, CMS has expanded the BondEdge system's coverage of derivatives. This release offers a new model for caps and floors and adds eurodollar futures contracts to the BondEdge database. These enhancements augment existing capabilities, which includes Treasury futures and an interest rate swaps model. The new caps/floors model allows clients to create a cap, floor or collar and values the instruments using the underlying LIBOR curve and a term structure of volatility that is fitted from observed cap market prices. BondEdge's new Quasi-Monte Carlo valuation model is employed in this analysis.

High Yield Appraisal Report

Finally, this version of BondEdge includes a new High Yield Appraisal Report for the securities in a selected portfolio that have a non-investment grade rating from Moody's and/or from Standard & Poor's. This new report allows portfolio managers to easily track exposure to high yield bonds by industry classification and provides the yield-to-worst and duration-to-worst measures typically used in this market.

About CMS

For over 20 years, CMS has been recognized as the leader in fixed income analytical software. Long known for the BondEdge system, CMS is trusted as an independent source of research, analytics and valuation tools by over 500 institutions in the U.S. and Canada. CMS is a division of Data Broadcasting Corporation (Nasdaq: DBCC), a leading provider of real-time market data, stock quotes, and financial news and information delivered via the Internet. More information on CMS is available at www.cms-info.com. Corporate information on DBC is available at www.dbc.com.