The idea of an LEI pre-dates the 2008 financial crisis by several decades. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) had advocated an LEI (at one time called the IBEI – International Business Entity Identifier) for many years, but was unable to pinpoint an organization ready to build and maintain such a directory. For many securities industry participants, existing identifiers, such as the Bank Identifier Code (BIC), met most of the market’s needs.
Before there was Turquoise, there was Boat. And Boat, you’ll recall, was the industry’s answer to the then-incoming regulation designed to ensure that pan-European equity trades were reported to a mechanism available to all in a standardized way. This was required because Europe’s markets were about to fragment, due to the introduction of multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) and the disassembling of the prior (anticompetitive) practice of reporting trades through domestic exchanges.
After last week’s heated industry discussions on the subject of data vendor licenses and IP rights (see commentary on which 
A lot of progress may have been achieved this year with regards to moving towards a new legal entity identification (LEI) standard, including getting the G20 to pay attention to the work that has happened thus far (see more on which 
Another interesting topic from last week’s FIMA conference (see commentary on the vendor lobbying discussions 
Marc Berthoud, vice chairman of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges’ (FESE) Economics and Statistics Committee and deputy head of data and index products SIX Swiss Exchange, explained the details of the exchange association’s recent initiative in the market data space: the Market Model Typology (MMT), to delegates at last week’s FIMA conference in London. Berthoud indicated that the group is focused on developing standards for trade flags for trade condition reporting across all markets and OTC (see the FESE website for more 
This week’s FIMA conference in London as usual saw industry practitioners discussing their recurring bugbears – IP rights within the vendor community, a lack of budget for more strategic data management projects (outside of those tied to compliance) and coping with the cost cutting exercises sweeping the financial services community – but it also involved a number of very interesting ideas being aired with regards to potential collaborative approaches in the data management space.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has finally issued its first list of globally systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) – a practice that it will reprise on an annual basis every November from now on – but what can these 29 firms expect in terms of new data requirements and when?
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Bank for International Settlements’ (BIS) Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) received 32 responses on the subject of data reporting, standards and aggregation for the OTC derivatives markets to its consultation. Following my summary of the first 16 responses earlier this week (see more 
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Thomson Reuters is reviewing apparently negative feedback from the market test of its proposals to avert the European Commission’s antitrust investigation into its restrictive licensing policy for its Reuters Instrument Code (RIC). The market data vendor’s efforts appear to have fallen on stony ground following an unsuccessful market test by the Commission of its proposed solution, which eased licensing of its consolidated data feeds to make it less onerous for customers to switch suppliers.
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I love to be on the inside track, probably because it happens so rarely, and so I am sorely tempted to answer the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) call for volunteers to participate in the private-sector LEI advisory panel that the industry group announced earlier this week. In fact, I haven’t felt quite so tempted since one of our reference data friends suggested I run for the managing directorship of the EDM Council.
But in that case – and most likely in this FSB one – my initial enthusiasm is dashed by two factors: 1) Grandad’s wise words (“Never volunteer for anything, son.”) and, 2) the use of the word ‘Expert’.
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