Template:Isda Preamble comp
Like all good stories, the ISDA starts with a {{ {{{1}}}|Preamble}}. Everyone, once, stares at that gnomic title and thinks, “okay, what the hell is this all about?”
Well, step this way, young padawan. Step into this rabbithole. A fellow called Gerald[1] asked a callow young contrarian to look at an aye-ess-dee-aye once, in about 1995, and — well, here we all are, folks. Honestly, if I had known how much time I was going to spend with the damn thing I would have paid a lot more attention in the first place.
A word on industry associations
ISDA, who publishes the ISDA, is the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. Those with a keen eye will note that, some time between 1992 and 2002, it rebranded from the “International Swap Dealers Associations, Inc.” — interesting plural, that, but in any case an outwardly sell-side outfit — to the more neutral-sounding “International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc.”: singular, at the same time more unitary and more inclusive sounding, but still in spirit the same old ISDA, stake-held predominantly by the largest broker-dealers on the face of the Earth. It may have aspirations to conquer the world but for now ISDA remains a “dealer-community” association.
As we note elsewhere, there is typically a “sell-side” broker and a “buy-side” end user to an ISDA Master Agreement.
These days the “buy-side lobby” is a lot bigger, more organised and better represented than it used to be, with AIMA (the Alternative Investment Management Association),[2] EFAMA (the European Fund and Asset Management Association,[3] the MFA (the Managed Funds Association),[4] (not to be confused, by the way, with the Fund Management Association of Kenya) and the IA (the Investment Association),[5] representing their interests.
The preamble
The {{ {{{1}}}|preamble}} is just the loosener before things get properly going, and there is not a lot to see. It has not really changed a lot between the 1992 ISDA and the 2002 ISDA (nor indeed, from the 1987 ISDA, except that the Single Agreement clause got promoted from a casual remark during the warm-up, in the 1987 ISDA, to the first searching delivery of the first over.[6]
- ↑ Hi Gerald!
- ↑ https://www.aima.org
- ↑ https://www.efama.org
- ↑ https://www.managedfunds.org
- ↑ https://www.theia.org
- ↑ Cricket metaphor. To our American readers, we would say sorry, except that we are not. There will be cricket analogies throughout.