SPA 2007: Standard & Poor's to structured products sellers: If you design indexes, we'll build it

By Sheri Kasprzak

New York, March 27 - Sellers of structured products are not limited to Standard & Poor's custom-made indexes said David Blitzer, a managing director at S&P, during the third-annual Structured Products Association conference held in New York Tuesday.

"If you design it, we will build it and run it for you," Blitzer said. "Most are in equities but not all are in equities. You're not limited to equities."

Putting together the indexes is the challenge, Blitzer said, noting that the issuers must think of their needs and their clients' needs.

Even so, there are some products, Blitzer said, that have given investors access to markets that they might normally not have access to, particularly the currencies in the BRIC basket.

Blitzer noted that two years ago, virtually no one in the U.S. investing community had access to Chinese stocks and Indian regulations also made it difficult to access that country's equity market. Some investors could buy Russian stocks in London and the Brazilian market has been "more or less accessible," Blitzer said.

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