Articles Marketmedia

Luxembourg Launches LEI Service

Written by Terry Flanagan | Sep 2, 2014 12:50:11 PM

LuxCSD, the central securities depository, has launched a service to issue legal entity identifiers for Luxembourg-domiciled entities in order to meet reporting requirements under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation.

The central securities depository, which is jointly owned by the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg and Clearstream International, said in a statement that it had been endorsed by Regulatory Oversight Committee to issue legal entity identifiers. Global financial regulators bought in LEIs after the financial crisis so that legal entities and/or fund companies can be clearly identified when they transact deals in financial markets through a 20-digit code that maps to key reference information.

Patrick Georg, general manager of LuxCSD, said in a statement: “Our new mandate to run the Luxembourg LEI issuance service allows us to assist local market participants in complying with the reporting requirements for domestic and cross-border transactions under Emir and all other reporting requirements throughout the world.”

LuxCSD said it has entered into a strategic collaboration with the US Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation to provide the infrastructure for its LEI services.

DTCC/Swift was top of consultant Tabb Group's inaugural ranking of the 14 global LEI providers with a score of 97% for the second quarter of this year.

Tabb Group said its ranking was based on the validity and comprehensiveness of the provider's LEI data, the number of entries, validity of regional information and the completeness of essential LEI field-level information.

Larry Tabb, chief executive and founder of Tabb Group said in a statement: “Highlighting the comprehensiveness of the LEI providers’ data submissions, the DTCC/Swift was followed by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and Takasbank, the Turkish LEI provider. We also want to publicly recognize WM Datenservice and the London Stock Exchange, which round out the top three providers based upon the quantity of entries and their comprehensiveness percentage.”

Last month was the two-year anniversary of the launch of the DTCC’s global markets entity identifier which was launched with Swift providing the ISO numbering expertise, Avox providing the validation expertise and Kingland Systems Corporation providing the technology infrastructure.

The DTCC said last month that the utility holds more than 140,000 globally accepted registered entities from over 140 countries and has a market share of approximately 50%.

In addition to the partnership with the LuxCSD, the DTCC also supports LEI issuance by CUSIP Global Services in the US, NordLEI in Sweden, and The Canadian Depository for Securities.