LONDON (Standard&Poor's) March 25, 2008—Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it assigned its preliminary credit ratings to the mortgage-backed floating-rate notes series 2008-W1 to be issued by Ludgate Funding PLC, an SPE (see list below). The collateral for this transaction comprises a pool of first-ranking mortgages secured over freehold and leasehold, owner-occupied, and "buy-to-let" properties in the U.K. The series originator is Wave Lending Ltd., and the arranger is Merrill Lynch International. This will be third securitization from the Ludgate Funding platform. The structure of this issuance remains largely unchanged from previous issuances. Standard&Poor's expects to rate the notes on a segregated basis, that is, the rating on each series will be independent from
