WHAT'S UP WITH THE LEGAL ENTITY IDENTIFIER?

It’s been a while since the need for recognizing legal organizations and their related entities has been identified. There have been a number of announcements on initiatives but little definitive movement on a coordinated global response to LEI.

Remember that it was difficult to determine their exposure of derivative trades especially for firms, like Lehman, that were facing a credit crisis. The initial drive for LEI was the Dodd Frank Act (DFA) and European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). Their focus was to reduce counter-party and systemic risk related to derivatives trading and settlement.

February 12^th was the date for SWAP trades to be processed with LEI. Problems were expected but the news about this event has been sparse.

What are your thoughts, good, bad or neutral, concerning global legal entity identifiers?

                        Are the regulators ready to respond to reported anomalies?

                                 Should a global identifier be extended to other assets?