I tried for a while to push internally and amongst a few of the markets to move to ISIN, Currency, MIC but yeah…anything but that.
Honestly the problem is the ticker is too valuable advertising for the listed company, and since listings are not governed by a central regulator in the same way they are in Europe, for example, there’s always going to be this sort of friction about who is willing to bend the most to win the business.
I think ISINs being used in Europe might even predate the EU taking charge of a lot of financial market regulation.
Probably they became more popular/important specifically because tickers did not, which in turn is probably because there are so many countries/exchanges that a global exchange-driven namespace was never really feasible?
Well, listings had domestic regulator control for the most part but I think you hit it on the head. Brokers in Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, or Milan needed to access 15-20 countries worth of exchanges, and the curse in the EU is the multi-currency cross listings.
Easier, if somewhat more verbose, to use the three in combo to identify. Helped somewhat by the message volumes being a small fraction of what they are in the US. Less need to optimize on a per order, or per market data packet basis.
Also explains why FIX is more prevalent in EU markets than it is in the US.
Honestly the problem is the ticker is too valuable advertising for the listed company, and since listings are not governed by a central regulator in the same way they are in Europe, for example, there’s always going to be this sort of friction about who is willing to bend the most to win the business.