74146 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 229 / Tuesday, November 30, 2010 / Notices 

Cars: Installation of a tire information 

placard. 

Standard No. 123 Motorcycle Controls 

and Displays: Installation of a U.S.- 

model speedometer/odometer unit to 

meet the requirements of this standard. 

Standard No. 205 Glazing Materials: 

Inspection of all vehicles, and removal 

of noncompliant glazing or replacement 

of the glazing with U.S.-certified 

components on vehicles that are not 

already so equipped. 

All comments received before the 

close of business on the closing date 

indicated above will be considered, and 

will be available for examination in the 

docket at the above addresses both 

before and after that date. To the extent 

possible, comments filed after the 

closing date will also be considered. 

Notice of final action on the petition 

will be published in the Federal 

Register pursuant to the authority 

indicated below. 

Authority: 49 U.S.C. 30141(a)(1)(A) and 

(b)(1); 49 CFR 593.8; delegations of authority 

at 49 CFR 1.50 and 501.8. 

Issued on: November 23, 2010. 

Claude H. Harris, 

Acting Associate Administrator for 

Enforcement. 

[FR Doc. 2010–30012 Filed 11–29–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4910–59–P 

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 

Surface Transportation Board 

Release of Waybill Data 

The Surface Transportation Board has 

received a request from McCarthy, 

Sweeney & Harkaway, P.C. on behalf of 

the State of Montana (WB10–069(1)), for 

permission to use certain data from the 

Board’s 2006 through 2009 (when 

available) Carload Waybill Sample. This 

request was made pursuant to 49 CFR 

1244.9(b)(4) because it is related to a 

proceeding before the Board, State of 

Montana v. BNSF Railway Company, 

NOR 42124. Because some of the 

waybill information requested is from 

entities not party to this proceeding (i.e., 

Union Pacific Railroad Company and 

Canadian Pacific Railway Company), 

the Board is providing notice and an 

opportunity to comment on the request. 

(The Board’s regulations do not 

specifically require Federal Register 

notice for this category of request.) A 

copy of the request may be obtained 

from the Office of Economics. See the 

contact listed below. 

The Board will follow its procedures 

set forth in 49 CFR 1244.9(d) for 

handling this waybill sample request. 

The waybill sample contains 

confidential railroad and shipper data; 

therefore, if any party objects to this 

request, it should file the objections 

with the Director of the Board’s Office 

of Economics within 14 calendar days of 

the publication of this notice. The rules 

for release of waybill data are codified 

at 49 CFR 1244.9. 

Contact: Scott Decker, (202) 245– 

0330. 

Jeffrey Herzig, 

Clearance Clerk. 

[FR Doc. 2010–30074 Filed 11–29–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4915–01–P 

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 

Office of Financial Research; 

Statement on Legal Entity 

Identification for Financial Contracts 

AGENCY: Office of Financial Research, 

Treasury. 

ACTION: Statement of policy with request 

for comment. 

SUMMARY: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street 

Reform and Consumer Protection Act 

(the ‘‘DFA’’), Public Law 111–203, 

establishes the Office of Financial 

Research (the ‘‘Office’’) and provides it 

with the authority to collect data to 

support the Financial Stability 

Oversight Council (the ‘‘Council’’) and to 

set standards for reporting such data. To 

support the Council in identifying 

connections among market participants 

and monitoring systemic risk, the Office 

intends to standardize how parties to 

financial contracts are identified in the 

data it collects on behalf of the Council. 

The Office is issuing a statement of 

policy regarding its preference to adopt 

through rulemaking a universal 

standard for identifying parties to 

financial contracts that is established 

and implemented by private industry 

and other relevant stakeholders through 

a consensus process. The statement of 

policy provides guidance on how the 

Office will evaluate whether a standard 

is adequate for adoption, including its 

attributes and method of 

implementation. The Office seeks 

comment on this statement of policy, 

including but not limited to the desired 

characteristics for a Legal Entity 

Identifier (‘‘LEI’’) and the institutional 

arrangements for issuing and 

maintaining identifiers and associated 

reference data. 

DATES: Comments must be received by 

January 31, 2011. 

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are 

invited to submit comments regarding 

this Statement according to the 

instructions for ‘‘Electronic Submission 

of Comments’’ below. All submissions 

must refer to the document title. The 

Office encourages the early submission 

of comments. 

Electronic Submission of Comments. 

Interested persons must submit 

comments electronically through the 

Federal eRulemaking Portal at http:// 

www.regulations.gov. Electronic 

submission of comments allows the 

commenter maximum time to prepare 

and submit a comment, ensures timely 

receipt, and enables the Office to make 

them available to the public. Comments 

submitted electronically through the 

http://www.regulations.gov Web site can 

be viewed by other commenters and 

interested members of the public. 

Commenters should follow the 

instructions provided on that site to 

submit comments electronically. 

To receive consideration as public 

comments, comments must be 

submitted through the method specified 

above. All submissions must refer to the 

title of the Statement. 

Public Inspection of Public 

Comments. All properly submitted 

comments will be available for 

inspection and downloading at http:// 

www.regulations.gov. 

Additional Instructions. In general, 

comments received, including 

attachments and other supporting 

materials, are part of the public record 

and are made available to the public. Do 

not submit any information in your 

comment or supporting materials that 

you consider confidential or 

inappropriate for public disclosure. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For 

further information regarding this 

Statement contact the Office of 

Domestic Finance, Treasury, at (202) 

622–1766. All responses to this 

Statement should be submitted via 

http://www.regulations.gov to ensure 

consideration. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background 

A. The Office of Financial Research 

Section 152 of the DFA established 

the Office within the Department of the 

Treasury. Among other things, section 

153(a) of the DFA authorizes the Office 

to collect data to support the Council’s 

duties, to provide such data to the 

Council and member agencies, and to 

standardize the types and formats of 

such data. Section 153(a) also provides 

that the Office should assist member 

agencies in determining the types and 

formats of data authorized by the DFA 

to be collected by member agencies. 

Section 154(b)(2)(A) requires the Office 

to prepare and publish a financial 

company reference database, a financial 


jdjones on DSK8KYBLC1PROD with NOTICES
Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 229 / Tuesday, November 30, 2010 / Notices 74147 

1See: http://www.cftc.gov/ucm/groups/public/ 

@otherif/documents/ifdocs/ 

federalregister112210.pdf; and http://sec.gov/rules/ 

proposed/2010/34-63446.pdf. 

2The identifier itself should not incorporate 

substantial information about the entity, such as 

name or principal place of business. Although such 

reference data may be useful, they are subject to 

change. Defining an identifier to include such 

information could threaten its persistence. 

instrument reference database, and 

formats and standards for data reported 

to the Office. Section 151(6)(B) provides 

that those data include information that 

identifies counterparties. 

B. The Need for a Universal Standard 

for Identifying Parties to Financial 

Contracts 

Precise and accurate identification of 

legal entities engaged in financial 

transactions is important to private 

markets and government regulation. In 

the private sector, data identifying 

counterparties support communication 

between systems, facilitate transaction 

processing, and allow for accurate 

aggregation of positions vis-a`-vis 

individual or classes of counterparties, 

which is necessary for effective risk 

management and calculation of margin. 

Sales, compliance, and due diligence 

functions also rely on unique 

identification of counterparties. In the 

public sphere, correctly identifying 

parties to financial contracts is critical 

to assessing the connections among 

financial firms and to monitoring 

systemic risk. 

There is currently no universal system 

for identifying the legal entities that 

participate in financial markets. In the 

absence of such a system, private firms 

and regulators have created a variety of 

identifiers. This creates inefficiencies 

for firms and presents obstacles to 

regulators and policymakers. 

At private firms, because there is no 

industry-wide legal entity identification 

standard, tracking counterparties and 

calculating exposures across multiple 

data systems is complicated, expensive, 

and can result in costly errors. For 

example, maintaining internal identifier 

databases and reconciling entity 

identification with counterparties is 

expensive for both large firms and small 

firms. Complete automation of backoffice activities remains elusive, in part 

because of the lack of a universal 

identifier for legal entities. In the worst 

case scenario, transactions are broken or 

fail to settle because counterparties have 

not been properly identified. 

The lack of a universal identification 

standard also poses problems for 

regulators and policymakers. For 

example, precise identification of 

financial firms is necessary to evaluate 

whether a firm poses a systemic risk, 

which involves the assessments of the 

relationships among firms operating 

across a range of markets. Indeed, the 

problems that firms face in aggregating 

exposure are magnified in measuring 

risk across the system. In addition, 

securities regulators must often identify 

parents and affiliates of broker-dealers 

manually and by name. Multiple and 

generally different identifiers for 

participants in securities trading make it 

difficult to create a consolidated order 

audit trail. 

The financial crisis has focused both 

industry and regulators on this issue. 

The DFA created the Office, in part, to 

support the Council and its member 

agencies in addressing such data 

standardization issues. Sections 153 and 

154 of the DFA require the Office to 

standardize the types and formats of 

data reported to and collected by the 

Office on behalf of the Council, and to 

prepare and publish formats and 

standards for that data. Section 

151(6)(B) provides that those data 

include information that identifies 

counterparties. 

In addition, section 154(b)(2) of the 

DFA requires the Office to prepare and 

publish a financial company reference 

database. Reference data for a legal 

entity could include its name, country 

of incorporation or principal place of 

business, and legal relationship to other 

entities. Identification of the legal entity 

is a fundamental ingredient in creating 

a reference database of financial 

companies. 

Finally, the DFA requires the CFTC 

and SEC to put in place requirements 

for reporting swaps and security-based 

swaps, respectively, to data repositories 

by July 15, 2011. Public Law 111–203, 

Sec. 727–728. These agencies are 

working to develop standards for this 

reporting, including requirements for 

these data repositories to have unique 

and consistent identifiers for 

counterparties and reference entities.1

The Office is coordinating with the 

CFTC and the SEC in these data 

standardization efforts. 

II. Statement of Policy 

In support of the Council’s duties to 

identify and assess risks and potential 

threats to the stability of the U.S. 

financial system, the Office, in 

consultation with the Chairperson of the 

Council, intends to establish 

requirements for reporting data on 

financial contracts to the Office that 

include a standardized way of 

identifying counterparties. In 

establishing such rules the Office would 

prefer to adopt a universal standard 

developed and implemented by the 

financial industry and other relevant 

stakeholders through a consensus 

process. In addition, the Office believes 

that participation of international 

standard setting bodies would be 

beneficial in developing a standard that 

can be used widely. 

If a LEI is established to the 

satisfaction the Office by July 15, 2011, 

the Office, in consultation with the 

Chairperson of the Council, plans to 

issue a regulation mandating the use of 

such a standard for data reported to the 

Office. 

In making this determination the 

Office will consider the following 

aspects of LEI systems: 

• The characteristics of the LEI, 

including the process of developing and 

maintaining standards for the LEI; 

• The institutional arrangements for 

issuing LEIs to specific legal entities; 

and 

• The institutional arrangements for 

developing, maintaining, and 

publishing related reference data. 

A. Characteristics of the LEI, Including 

the Process of Developing and 

Maintaining Standards for the LEI 

A LEI acceptable for use with data 

reported to the Office should: 

(1) Be based on a standard developed 

and maintained via an international 

‘‘voluntary consensus standards body,’’ 

as defined in Office of Management and 

Budget (‘‘OMB’’) Circular No. A–119 

Revised, such as the International 

Organization for Standardization 

(‘‘ISO’’); 

(2) Be unique for each legally distinct 

entity, where each legal entity is 

assigned only one LEI which cannot be 

reassigned; 

(3) Persist over the life of an entity 

regardless of corporate actions or other 

business or structural changes; 

(4) Include minimal information 

about the entity in the identifier itself; 2

(5) Accommodate growth in the 

number of legal entities that need to be 

identified in the full range of reporting 

systems and to potential industry and 

regulatory innovations; 

(6) Be available for all eligible markets 

participants, including but not limited 

to all financial intermediaries, all 

companies that issue stock or debt listed 

on an exchange, all companies that 

trade stock or debt, infrastructure 

providers, all entities subject to 

financial regulation, and firms affiliated 

with such entities; 

(7) Not be contractually restricted in 

use; 

(8) Where possible, be compatible 

with existing systems, work across 

various platforms, and not conflict with 


jdjones on DSK8KYBLC1PROD with NOTICES
74148 Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 229 / Tuesday, November 30, 2010 / Notices 

3See: http://www.cftc.gov/stellent/groups/public/ 

@otherif/documents/ifdocs/ 

federalregister112210.pdf; and http://sec.gov/rules/ 

proposed/2010/34-63446.pdf. 

other numbering or identification 

schemes; 

(9) Be readily accessible using secure 

and open standards; 

(10) Be reliable and secure against 

corruption or misuse; and 

(11) Be capable of becoming the single 

international standard for unique 

identification of legal entities in the 

financial sector. 

B. Institutional Arrangements for 

Issuing LEIs 

A LEI acceptable for use with data 

reported to the Office should be issued 

by an entity with expertise in 

implementing standards for the 

financial sector. 

The entity should be organized and 

operated as a not-for-profit body and 

have a formally documented governance 

structure with balanced representation 

for relevant stakeholders. It should be 

subject to supervision and regulation. 

The entity should also have a strong 

ethics policy, addressing in part 

potential conflicts of interest. 

Issuance of LEIs must be timely and 

non-discriminatory. The process of 

issuing new LEIs must not materially 

hinder the normal course of an entity’s 

business. 

All of the entity’s processes must be 

adequately governed and auditable. 

Access to the master identifier list and 

the issuance process for new identifiers 

must be made available at all times. 

The security and reliability of all IT 

systems involved in identifier issuance 

and database maintenance and 

publication must meet or exceed 

industry standards for a real-time, highavailability market service. 

Identifiers must be available to the 

public without fees for storage, access, 

cross-referencing, or redistribution. 

However, consistent with OMB Circular 

No. A–119 Revised, the cost of issuing 

identifiers and maintaining their 

reliability may be recovered through 

other fees, as long as they are reasonable 

and they are not imposed on end-users. 

C. Institutional Arrangements for 

Developing, Maintaining, and 

Publishing LEI Reference Data 

A LEI acceptable for use with data 

reported to the Office should have a 

closely associated process for 

developing, maintaining and publishing 

related reference data for each LEI 

issued. 

The scope of the reference data 

provided for each LEI issued should be 

sufficient to verify that users have 

correctly identified an entity and should 

include at a minimum the following 

information for each identifier: 

(1) Name; 

(2) Location; 

(3) Electronic address; and 

(4) Legal status. 

The entity responsible for producing 

and publishing the LEI reference data 

should have expertise in this area. It 

must be operated on a not-for-profit 

basis and have a formally documented 

governance structure with balanced 

representation for relevant stakeholders. 

It should also be subject to supervision 

and regulation. 

The entity must have a robust quality 

assurance process. Updates to the LEI 

reference data should be accomplished 

with minimal lag time and market 

participants and regulators should be 

able to challenge entries and request 

amendments. The quality assurance 

process should seek to ensure that 

duplicate identification numbers are not 

erroneously assigned. The quality 

assurance process should also include 

checks for existing entities including 

name searches, address searches, and 

combinations of text strings and other 

characteristics. 

The entity’s processes should be 

adequately governed and auditable. The 

security and reliability of all IT systems 

involved in developing, maintaining, 

and publishing LEI reference data 

should meet or exceed industry 

standards for a real-time, high 

availability market service. Reference 

data must be available to the public 

without fees for storage, access, crossreferencing, or redistribution. However, 

consistent with OMB Circular No. A– 

119 Revised, the cost of developing, 

maintaining, and publishing LEI 

reference data may be recovered through 

other fees, as long as they are reasonable 

and they are not imposed on those who 

use the reference data. 

In addition, if a robust universal LEI 

is designated by the Office, under the 

principles outlined above for the 

purpose of reporting data to the Office, 

it is the expectation of the Office that 

such a LEI system, including the 

relevant reference data, would be the 

foundation for the financial company 

reference database that the Office would 

publish under the DFA section 

154(b)(2)(A)(i). 

D. Next Steps 

In the event that a universal LEI is 

established to the satisfaction of the 

Office by July 15, 2011, the Office, in 

consultation with the Chairperson of the 

Council, plans to issue a regulation 

mandating the use of such a standard for 

data reported to the Office. Further, the 

Office will publish in the Federal 

Register, no later than 60 days prior to 

the earlier of the implementation dates 

established by the CFTC and SEC for 

their new reporting requirements,3 the 

name of the identification system 

approved by the Office, the name and 

contact information of the entity 

through which counterparties can 

obtain LEIs provided through the 

approved identification system, and 

information concerning the procedure 

and requirements for obtaining such a 

LEI. 

The Office invites comments on all 

aspects of this statement of policy, 

including but not limited to the desired 

characteristics for LEI and the 

institutional arrangements for issuing 

and maintaining identifiers and 

associated reference data. 

Dated: November 23, 2010. 

Lewis Alexander, 

Counselor to the Secretary. 

[FR Doc. 2010–30018 Filed 11–29–10; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4810–25–P 

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 

Bureau of the Public Debt 

Proposed Collection: Comment 

Request 

ACTION: Notice and request for 

comments. 

SUMMARY: The Department of the 

Treasury, as part of its continuing effort 

to reduce paperwork and respondent 

burden, invites the general public and 

other Federal agencies to take this 

opportunity to comment on proposed 

and/or continuing information 

collections, as required by the 

Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, 

Public Law 104–13 (44 U.S.C. 

3506(c)(2)(A)). Currently the Bureau of 

the Public Debt within the Department 

of the Treasury is soliciting comments 

concerning the U.S. Treasury Auction 

Submitter Agreement. 

DATES: Written comments should be 

received on or before February 1, 2011, 

to be assured of consideration. 

ADDRESSES: Direct all written comments 

to Bureau of the Public Debt, Robert 

Schumacher, 200 Third Street, A4–A, 

Parkersburg, WV 26106–5312, or 

Robert.Schumacher@bpd.treas.gov. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Requests for additional information or 

copies of the form and instructions 

should be directed to Robert 

Schumacher, Bureau of the Public Debt, 

200 Third Street, A4–A, Parkersburg, 

WV 26106–5312, (304) 480–8150. 


jdjones on DSK8KYBLC1PROD with NOTICES