Financial Instrument Global Identifier
A Bloomberg Global Identifier (BBGID) uniquely identifies a security. Its structure is defined by Bloomberg L.P.. BBGIDs have been created for more than 36 million unique securities, representing most asset classes of the financial markets. The BBGID is a 12-character alpha-numerical code that does not contain information characterizing financial instruments, but serves for uniform identification of a unique global security that does not change.
Securities to which BBGIDs can be issued include common stock, options, derivatives, futures, corporate and government bonds, municipals, currencies, and mortgage products. Unique BBGIDs identify securities as well as individual exchanges on which they trade. Composite BBGIDs are also issued to represent unique securities across related exchanges. For instance, Apple Inc. common stock trades on 14 exchanges in the United States. There exists a unique BBGID to identify the common stock on each individual exchange, but also a composite BBGID to represent the company's common stock traded on United States exchanges.[1]
Description
A BBGID consists of three parts: A three-character "BBG" prefix, to easily identify it as a BBGID; an eight character alpha-numeric code which does not contain English vowels "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U"; and a single check digit.[2] In total, the encoding supports more than 852 billion potential values.[3]
Issuance
Unique BBGIDs are published by Bloomberg L.P. and datasets are both searchable and available for download via the Bloomberg Open Symbology website.
License
In contrast to many other forms of security identifiers available on the market, BBGIDs are released free into the public domain with no commercial terms or restrictions on usage.[4]
Adoption
On March 19th, 2010, NYSE Euronext announced that beginning in April, NYSE Euronext would start distributing BBGIDs along with their own proprietary security identifiers on all of their data products globally.[5]
On March 21st, 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced that BBGIDs would now be accepted to uniquely identify securities reported to its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated Trade Reporting And Compliance Engine (TRACE) program.[6]
References
- ^ "BSYM: Bloomberg Open Symbology". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
- ^ "Bloomberg ID Symbology" (PDF). Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
- ^ "Bloomberg Global ID" (PDF). Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
- ^ "Bloomberg ID Symbology" (PDF). Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
- ^ Schmerken, Ivy. "NYSE Euronext Joins Forces with Bloomberg on Market Data Open Symbology". Wall Street & Technology. Retrieved 18 May 2012.
- ^ "Bloomberg Open Symbology Gains Traction with Take-Up by Finra". A-Team Group. Retrieved 18 May 2012.