For over half a century, Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence has operated the Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures—Cusip—on behalf of the American Bankers Association (ABA), the owner and founder of the reference data standard.

But now, the European Commission has stipulated that in the ongoing merger between S&P Global and IHS Markit, S&P must divest Cusip, which observers say has been a ready and ample source of income for the data company since the ABA selected it