SIX Securities Services is to offer Legal Entity Identifiers to Swiss companies in partnership with the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation.

The agreement comes as Europe readies itself for the implementation of MiFID II on 1 January 2018, which will require all legal entities involved in a trade, including the executing, submitting or transmitting firm, on both the buy- and sell-side, to include LEIs in their European trade reporting.

Using the DTTC’s GMEI utility, SIX will be able to offer local entities the ability to register and renew LEIs in order to trade with European counterparties.

Ron Jordan, managing director of data services at DTCC, says: “The true value of the global LEI system will be realised when regulatory reporting covering all asset classes in every jurisdiction is required to use LEIs to identify trading parties. We look forward to building a strategic partnership with SIX Securities Services – a positive addition to successful collaborations worldwide with CUSIP Global Services (CGS) and TMX’s Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS) in North America as well as NordLEI in Europe.”

Despite initial enthusiasm for the programme, the global uptake of LEIs for tracking trading counterparties has so far been spotty. The first LEIs were issued in 2012 and by the end of January 2017 487,000 had been registered. But progress has stalled: in 2016 there were 64,000 issued but 76,000 lapsed.

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