Equivalent - GMSLA Provision
GMSLA Anatomy™
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Notice under 6.7 is the notice required to participate in a corporate action.
This is a beast of a provision to parse. What I think it means in summary is this:
Equivalent in a Nutshell™ (GMSLA edition)
Equivalent: securities that are fungible with the securities in question, as long as:
- (a) Where the securities are partly paid or have been converted, subdivided, consolidated, made the subject of a takeover, rights of pre-emption, or include rights to receive securities, it includes securities a holder would be entitled after that event (having complied with all formalities) and provided that the party being paid the equivalent amount has given notice and paid the all sums required in time for the holder to exercise its rights.
- (b) Where the securities:
- (i) have been redeemed, it means the redemption proceeds;
- (ii) are subject to a call, it means fungible securities, provided that receiving party thas paid the holder the amounts due in respect of the call;
- (iii) are subject to a capitalisation issue, it includes securities allotted by way of bonus on the securities in question;
- (iv) are subject to any similar event, it means those securities with (or replaced by) the cash and securities received by the holder in connection with the event.
- (i) have been redeemed, it means the redemption proceeds;
the key thing to observe is that “equivalent" doesn't mean “of a similar type" or “broadly somewhat like the thing I gave you". It means THE EXACT SAME THING. Same cusip; same isin. Nothing else will do. The only distinction that “equivalent" permits is that the security does not have to be the precise security, down to the certificate number, that I gave you, as long as it is identical to and fungible with it.
The reason for that is that a stock loan is a title transfer arrangement: since you are free to do with the stock I gave you as you please, you can (and probably will) sell it to someone else. So I can't very well expect you to give exactly the same item back to me. It's not a loan, after all. And actually if I were able to ask for the same item back, it would interfere with the legal characterisation of our stock loan as a title transfer arrangement.
GMSLA Equivalence
Techy linguistic aside: Now here’s a funny thing. In the 2000 GMSLA, there were four defined terms relating to the Securities and Collateral that pass between the parties to a stock loan, all of them nouns:
But under the 2010 GMSLA, there are just three; two shorter nouns and an adjective:
This means you can move from the utterly tiring “Securities, Collateral, Equivalent Securities or Equivalent Collateral” which is fire-hosed throughout the 2000 GMSLA to the less offensive “Securities, Collateral or their Equivalents” in the 2010 GMSLA.[1]
See also
- ↑ Well,you could have, but the drafters didn’t.