Mapping LEIs to Bloomberg Tickers and Security Identifiers
Summary
The document explains why legal entity identifiers, Bloomberg tickers, and security identifiers do not generally map one to one. An LEI identifies an entity, while instruments such as bonds issued by that entity have their own identifiers. A single entity can therefore be associated with multiple securities, making a direct conversion from LEI to one bond ISIN ambiguous.
The answer describes a Bloomberg workflow for retrieving entity and ticker fields, obtaining a bond list for an issuer, and then looking up identifiers for individual bonds. It also notes that lookup behavior can depend on Bloomberg settings and that some identifier types, such as options ISINs, may not be supported through the API. These are platform-specific examples rather than a complete identifier standard, and the answer recommends consulting Bloomberg support for field and settings details.
Key ideas
- An LEI identifies a legal entity, whereas an ISIN identifies a particular security.
- One entity may issue many securities, so an LEI does not determine a unique bond ISIN.
- A ticker may identify a specific listed instrument, but identifier relationships depend on instrument and market context.
- Bloomberg fields and security chains can be used to enumerate an issuer’s securities and retrieve their identifiers.
- Bloomberg lookup results may depend on settings, and API support can vary by security type.
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Full text
# Is LEI and Bloomberg Ticker one to one mapping. How about LEI, Bloomberg Ticker, Bloomberg ID, ISIN and CUSIP?
# Is LEI and Bloomberg Ticker one to one mapping. How about LEI, Bloomberg Ticker, Bloomberg ID, ISIN and CUSIP?
I am working on a project and need to map different IDs. Is LEI and Bloomberg Ticker one to one mapping? I can use Bloomberg formular =BDP(A1,"LEGAL_ENTITY_IDENTIFIER") to convert ticker "DUK US Equity" in excel A1 to LEI, but did not find formular to reverse it. So I suspect there will be a non-1-1 mapping issue here. How about LEI, Bloomberg Ticker, Bloomberg ID, ISIN and CUSIP? I think there must be one to multiple mapping among them, any one can sort it out?
## Answer by AKdemy (score 3)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/74342
Best to ask the help desk. You can apply the following logic.
What the formula will return will reflect the settings you have on your `CNDF` and `PDFQ` settings. You can do something like this though:
```
=BDP(BDP("DE0008404005"&" ISIN","EQY_FUND_TICKER")&" Equity","px last")
```
Alternatively, you can specify the exchange code after the ISIN (provided you know that).
```
=BDP("DE0008404005 GY"&" ISIN","px last")
```
There are lots of nuances; for example ISINs for options are not supported in the API (at least they were not last time I checked).
As mentioned in a comment, LEI are unique per entity. Therefore, it would not work to go from LEI to a single bond ISINs for example. It will work for tickers like `DUK US Equity` though, because this ticker is also unique. You can also get the entire bond chain and the associated ISINs (and other identifiers of interest) for a LEI
e.g.
- `=BDP("DUK US Equity","LEGAL_ENTITY_IDENTIFIER")` gives the LEI which is `I1BZKREC126H0VB1BL91`
- `=BDP(I1BZKREC126H0VB1BL91&" LEI","ULT_PARENT_TICKER_EXCHANGE")` gives `DUK US`
- `=BDP(A1&" LEI","CAST_PARENT_EQUITY_TICKER")` gives `DUK US Equity` directly, where A1 is the cell with the LEI ID in it.
- `=BCHAIN("DUK US EQUITY","Bonds")` to get the list of bonds that DUK US Equity issued. You can run `=BDP(A1;"ID_ISIN")` to get the associated ISIN for each bond. Given a bond ISIN, you can also retrieve LEI.Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.