January 10, 2012 - The BIS-backed Financial Stability Board has set up a working group to deliver concrete recommendations on governance issues relating to the management of new Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI) in the global securities markets. The supra-national regulatory co-ordination body has been tasked by the Group of 20 with preparing recommendations for an LEI governance framework by June of this year.

The initiative - designed to produce an electronic tag for the counterparties in all securities transactions - has been led by the US watchdog, the Office of Financial Research (OFR) as a way to create a more transparent capital markets industry and to limit the possibility of systemic risk.

The OFR has called on the industry to develop a set of LEI requirements and to have a solution ready for use by 2012. So far ISO 17442 has been selected as the messaging standard for the project and Swift has been appointed as the registration authority and the US-based clearing utility Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation will act as facilities manager.

At a meeting in Basel yesterday, the FSB approved the creation of an expert group from the official sector, to be supported by a private-sector advisory panel, to deliver "concrete proposals by April on the implementation of a global LEI system".

At the same Basel meeting, the FSB also set up an 'OTC derivatives co-ordination' group with the goal of establishing adequate safeguards for a global framework for central counterparties (CCPs). The FSB says the group will work to co-ordinate international standards setting so that, "by June 2012, authorities can make informed decisions on the appropriate form of CCPs to meet their commitment that all OTC derivatives be centrally cleared by end-2012".