The Atlantis Variation

The 2008 ISDA Master Agreement, also known as the Atlantis agreement is a rumoured edition of the ISDA Master Agreement, which, according to legend, was almost completed in September 2008, but never saw the light of day, instead collapsing into dark energy that powers the hidden universe. If implemented, the 2008 ISDA Master Agreement would expected to address the financial, infrastructural and regulatory challenges which were dominating the derivatives trading market at the time. It would have consolidated trading documentation across a wide range of products (including but not limited to repo, stock lending, prime brokerage, exchange traded derivatives, physical commodities and emissions, in so doing moving the financial world into a stable state of sunlit utopia; future-proofed agile legal agreements requiring no more than the cursory forensic management that could be garnered cheaply through unskilled personel in low-cost off-shore jurisdictions or, eventually, robots.

As it was, the challenge was just too big. The project expanded — at first graudually, in the closing stages at breakneck pace — and in the final days is believed to have exceeded its Schwarzschild radius altogether, leading to sudden catastrophic implosion, taking with it all traces of the agreement, earlier drafts, the firm ISDA engaged to coordinate the drafting (Messrs Tubb Fuller Breaden Potter Bacon) or several thousand lowly in-house lawyers seconded to the task of contributing their “clarifications” and doubt-avoidances to the standard form. All — the document, the personnel, and the drafting tedia — have been lost to history, and we now do not know what the agreement said, how it said it, or even whether it really existed at all.