Fitch: Replacement of Declaration's Management Personnel Not Expected to Impact Ratings

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fitch Ratings has received a notice regarding the replacement of key management personnel at Declaration Management & Research LLC (Declaration), a collateral manager of the five structured finance CDOs listed below.

Three managers specified in the transactions' documents as key management personnel of the collateral manager are no longer employed by Declaration. The collateral manager proposed to replace these key management personnel with three employees of Manulife Asset Management LLC, an affiliate of Declaration, with the effective date of the proposal Aug. 31, 2012. Holders of at least 75% of the Aggregate Outstanding Amount of all notes may within 30 days of this proposal object to any of the officer replacements.

Since all of the affected transactions are currently static and are no longer actively managed by Declaration, Fitch does not expect this change in personnel to have any impact on the existing ratings of the notes in each of the transactions.

The affected transactions are:

--Independence I CDO, Ltd./Inc.

--Independence II CDO, Ltd./Inc.

--Independence IV CDO, Ltd./Inc.

--Independence V CDO, Ltd./Inc.

--Straits Global ABS CDO I, Ltd./Inc.

Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'.

The information used to assess these ratings was sourced from the issuer, periodic trustee reports, note valuation reports, and the public domain.

Applicable Criteria and Related Research:

--'Global Structured Finance Rating Criteria' (June 6, 2012);

--'Global Rating Criteria for Structured Finance CDOs' (Oct. 6, 2011).

Applicable Criteria and Related Research:

Global Structured Finance Rating Criteria

http://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=679923

Global Rating Criteria for Structured Finance CDOs

http://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=651560

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