JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are to outsource the management of their family of credit derivative indices to Dow Jones, the third-party index provider.

The move comes just a week after 11 global dealers launched a rival US credit default swap index in the latest attempt to tackle the dominance of Trac-x. This rival is managed by iBoxx, a consortium-owned independent index provider. According to sources at banks behind iBoxx, it was launched because of growing discontent with JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley's licensing terms and the lack of independence in the Trac-x indices' construction.