The CSSF issued on 12 October 2017 a press release whereby it reminds that under the new EMIR reporting requirements, the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) will be mandatory as of 1 November 2017 to identify the counterparty in a derivative transaction (i.e. reporting counterparty ID) and that, in order to accept the EMIR reports, trade repositories will check the LEI of the reporting counterparty with the GLEIF database.

The use of an LEI is already required under a number of EU regulations and directives such as the:

  • European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) – counterparties to derivatives contracts as well as beneficiaries, brokers, CCPs and clearing members;
  • Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) – issuers of financial instruments; entities involved or reporting in suspicious transactions;
  • Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) – credit and financial institutions;
  • Alternative Investment Funds Directive (AIFMD) – funds and fund managers;
  • Credit Rating Agencies Regulation (CRAR) – credit rating agencies and rated entities;
  • Solvency II – pension funds and insurance companies;
  • Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) – CSDs, CSDs’ participants;
  • Transparency Directive – issuers of financial instruments listed on Regulated Markets;
  • Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) – parties involved in securities financing transactions and the beneficiaries of the rights and obligations arising from these;
  • Prospectus Regulation – issuers of securities offered to the public or admitted to trading on a regulated market situated or operating within a EU member state; and
  • Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II)/Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR).

ESMA has released a statement on 9 October providing information to the various entities required to use a LEI (https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/library/esma70-145-238_lei_briefing_note.pdf).