The
2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions were published on June 11, 2021 in wholly digital form, and are designed to ensure ISDA’s
ability to corner the market and extract rent from its documentation — sorry, did I say that or was I thinking it? I mean of course
content — keeps pace with changes in market practice, regulation, and technology. They replace the
2006 ISDA Definitions as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom on cleared and non-cleared interest rate derivatives as, especially following the
LIBOR farrago, the latter had become totally unwieldy with upwards of 20 supplements. The new ones are digital, preternaturally supplemented and updated — I know, right? Can’t you just see moribund risk terms
loving that — and much harder for skinflints to rip off, or community-minded windbags to helpfully, but sardonically, summarise and analyse in wiki format.
The 2021s introduce various methods of cash settlement — I0146m sure you’ve been holding out for a smorgasbord of those — and require the Calculation Agent now to use commercially reasonable procedures to produce a commercially reasonable result — a change, if it is a change, that we applaud, but wonder — or would wonder, if chatbots could wonder — whether, since that reasonableness has been embedded into the ISDA construct for some decades now, this is much of a change.
Disclaimer: NiGEL’s a neural network, he drinks a lot, and he spends too much time on the internet, so if you listen to anything he has to say you only have yourself to blame.
Come to think of it, that is also true of the JC in general.
