Pricing Partners (www.pricingpartners.com), the independent valuation expert and a world leader in independent valuation of derivatives and pricing models and analytics, announced that it has signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft France within the IDEES program to accelerate the kick off of its flagship independent valuation platform for financial structured products.

Distributing already its software and services to many clients including the four major French banks, Pricing Partners develops and sells a pricing library for financial products based on an intuitive language describing cash flows. This language allows pricing virtually any financial product, from the vanilla to the most exotic financial products on most assets (Interest Rates, Fixed Income, Equity, Inflation, Credit, Foreign Exchange, Commodities, Life Insurance and Hybrid products). With the growing appetite for more transparency and indendent valuation, Pricing Partners has created 'Price-it® Online', a platform for independent valuation in a SaaS format, using the latest Microsoft . net technologies. This platform allows to book, analyze and price derivative products, providing a neutral and fair valuation for hard to value OTC and structured products with no listed prices.

'Transparency on financial products has become a major theme. Many players suddenly realized that they were not fully aware of the value and risk of their financial derivatives portfolios. This led us to imagine the next generation platform to support active management for structured products that leverages on the Microsoft. Net C + +, C # and SQL Server technologies to provide to a large number of clients tools and automation with technological gains and breakthrough offered by the Microsoft sphere. 'Said Eric Benhamou, CEO of Pricing Partners and former Goldman Sachs quant.

And René Anger, CTO of Pricing Partners and former HSBC Technology specialist, to add 'We are very thrilled to conclude a strategic agreement with Microsoft France to ensure to our customers that we will be empowered directly by Microsoft and take advantage of their latest technologies and corresponding technological gains in terms of deployment and computing power.'

'Platforms that combine flexibility, rapid deployment and computing power will profoundly change the economic model for the financial software industry and allow addressing rapidly a massive number of clients by providing them automated and collaborative tools. We want to help Pricing Partners becoming a global leader in this area by providing them technology and business development support through access to our Microsoft Technology Center, and access to our ecosystem of large accounts partners. 'Says Lubomira Rochet in charge of the program IDEAS at Microsoft France

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (quoted on the NASDAQ under the symbol MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software. The company develops and markets a wide range of software, accessories and services to professional and domestic use. Microsoft's mission is to bring expertise, innovation and passion behind it for projects, ambitions and creativity of its customers and partners to make technology their best ally in the 'expression of their potential. Founded in 1983, Microsoft France employs over 1 200 people. Since 1 February 2005, Microsoft France is chaired by Eric Boustouller.

About Pricing Partners
Set up by former professionals of the trading industry, that worked in institutions like Goldman Sachs, Natixis, Societe Generale, or HSBC, Pricing Partners offers accurate solutions for derivatives products valuation, pricing tools and risk analytics. Thanks to Price-it® online, a SaaS platform, Pricing Partners provides independent valuation from the vanilla to the most exotic financial products on most assets (Interest Rates, Fixed Income, Equity, Inflation, Credit, Foreign Exchange, Commodities, Life Insurance and Hybrid products). Pricing Partners develops and commercializes Price-it® Excel, an analytic and independent pricing library using a generic payoff language description which allows the pricing of virtually any financial derivatives. Price-it® also supports VaR, CVaR and the most common risk management tools. Pricing Partners is the only company completely mastering the chain of valuation, developing both its own pricing library and a valuation platform giving its clients very accurate and reliable valuation as a result of its intrinsic knowledge of the pricing tools. Pricing Partners solutions can be used by investment banks, buy side firms, hedge funds, financial departments, trading rooms and audit firms.
Pricing Partners has also signed numerous partnerships to distribute its technology with leading institutions like NYSE Euronext (for its independent valuation service via Primesource), Misys (for its pricing library integrated into Summit), CMA or Lexifi. It is also a Microsoft IDEES partner, an IBM, Sun, Datasynapse partner. It is also a member of the grid research consortium GCPMF regrouping BNP Paribas, Calyon, Ecole Centrale, EDF, ENPC, the Inria, Natixis, Misys, Pars VI University and Supelec and a global coordinator of the Credinext consortium, in collaboration with PrimeSource, Lunalogic, the Ecole Polytechnique, the ENPC, the University of Marne La Vallée and the INRIA.

CONTACT: Marketing Department, Pricing Partners
Tel: +33 1 5526 43 00
Fax: +33 1 5526 42 03
e-mail: marketing@pricingpartners.com
website : http://www.pricingpartners.com

ABOUT IDEES
The IDEES program was created in 2005 by Microsoft France in order to identify the leaders of the software industry of tomorrow and help them develop. This partnership program for young innovative companies adapts to different stages of life, based on four main fields of actions.
The IDEA program provides a range of expertise and technological resources including access to the Microsoft Technology Center. It brings the guaranty of Microsoft and facilitates relationships between companies and potential customers, and accelerates its development. Furthermore, by facilitating access to the French ecosystem of software, the IDEAS program is a valuable tool for Fundraising (thirty VCs with which partnership agreements were created). Finally, Microsoft associate companies of its program to its communication and a large number of events organized or co-organized.
At each stage, the IDEES and its partner ecosystem of innovation share their expertise in the form of advice and support strategic and creating real value added and a fertile environment for the development of the company.

For more information about IDEES, visit http://www.microsoft.com/france/apropos/idees/default.aspx