CounterpartyLink was established early in 2005 by a group of executives from the financial information industry. Through the group’s long experience in working with some of the world’s largest financial organisations and exchanges, this team realised that the collection and maintenance of legal entity data was a crucial but often overlooked part of the reference data challenge. The group’s view was that there had been a shortage of sources for this information, particularly data that is collected and maintained with regard to today’s compliance requirements.