Sicovam, an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for ''Société Interprofessionnelle pour la Compensation des Valeurs Mobilières'', is both a security identifier system used to identify French securities listed on French stock exchanges, as well as the company set up to assign them. Sicovam was merged into the European-wide

Euroclear Euroclear is a Belgium-based financial services company that specializes in the settlement of securities transactions, as well as the safekeeping and asset servicing of these securities. It was founded in 1968 as part of J.P. Morgan & Co. to settl ...

and as of July 1, 2003 SICOVAMs are no longer issued, ISINs being used instead.

Description

Sicovams consist of a six-digit identifier, assigned by the Sicovam group "by hand" in order of issue. For instance,

Alcatel Alcatel may refer to: * Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia * Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...

was assigned 013000. Sicovams could be directly converted to ISINs as with other older systems, including

CUSIP A CUSIP is a nine-digit numeric (e.g. 037833100 for Apple) or nine-character alphanumeric (e.g. 38259P508 for Google) code that identifies a North American financial security for the purposes of facilitating clearing and settlement of trades. ...

and

SEDOL SEDOL stands for Stock Exchange Daily Official List, a list of security identifiers used in the United Kingdom and Ireland for clearing purposes. The numbers are assigned by the London Stock Exchange, on request by the security issuer. SEDOLs ser ...

. To do so the number was padded out with three zeros on the front, then the country code "FR" was added to the front and the ISIN

check digit A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for error detection on identification numbers, such as bank account numbers, which are used in an application where they will at least sometimes be input manually. It is analogous to a binary parity ...

to the end. {{Authority control Security identifier types Financial metadata