Double full stop
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Towards more picturesque speech™
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A sure sign a document has had a tortured gestation, during which it was feasted on by legal eagles from all quarters but — critically — before all was said and done deal fatigue set in, most of them lost interest, and someone said, “O.K., hang it, let’s just sign the damn thing.” What is left is a tract with all the usual tedious legal tropes but unusally strewn with typos, the most feckless of which is the double full stop..
It says, “I am past caring. Just deliver me from this godforsaken project.”
A celebrated example comes from the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority’s recent, bished, attempt to update its rules on asset segregation for investment funds. Now you can imagine, as no doubt CIMA did, that such a project was hardly calculated to attract world-wide attention. Perhaps the task was assigned to the newest member of the team as a way of learning the ropes. We speculate.
It starts off brightly enough:
“5.2. The Portfolio must be segregated and accounted for separately from any assets of any Service Provider.”
But things took a turn for the darker a few paragraphs down:
The overriding requirement of Rule 5.2 is that a Fund must ensure that none of its Service Providers use the Portfolio to finance their own or any other operations in any way.
Eheu! This seems to prohibit the rehypothecation by any service provider, such as, for example, a prime broker of assets.
The overriding requirement of Rule 5.2 is that a Fund must ensure that none of its Service Providers use the Portfolio to finance their own or any other operations in any way