Specified Transaction - ISDA Provision
Specified Transactions, default under which entitles one to close out the ISDA, excludes Transactions under the ISDA itself. This is for the sensible reason that a default under an ISDA Transaction is covered by elsewhere in the ISDA (eg Failure to Pay or Deliver and Breach of Obligation concepts, and it might lead to a perverse result if a Transaction was not otherwise an Event of default under any ISDA provision but the DUST provision, however unlikely that may be.
The 2002 ISDA expands the basic definition of Specified Transaction to specifically include futures credit derivatives, repo, stock lending, weather derivatives, NDFs, transactions executed under terms of business and other commodities or similar transactions that is presently or in future becomes common in the financial markets.
An odd cognitive dissonance
Note DUST doesn't generally pick up contracts in the nature of borrowed money or indebtedness, because these are picked up under the wider scope of the Cross Default provision which, of course, applies to indebtedness your counterparty owes to anyone, not just to you (though it does cover indebtedness owed to you). Still, there is weirdness: Cross Default contemplates a Threshold Amount before it can be triggered. DUST doesn't. So this leads to an odd gap:
- A (sub Threshold Amount) default under Specified Indebtedness between the two contractual parties would not entitle the innocent party to close out;
- A default under any other Specified Transaction between them would even if a smaller quantum of default. This is kind of counterintuitive. If you were to define DUST to include indebtedness, of course, you'd be covered.