Template:M summ 2016 NY CSA 6(c)

Economically, to “rehypothecate” an asset you have been pledged is to take full legal and beneficial title to it, against an obligation to return an equivalent, fungible asset at a later date. This means you can sell the asset in the market, thereby realising funds with it, or use it as collateral in a market transaction elsewhere.

Legal beagles will be fascinated, while no one else will care, that in a New York law “rehypothecation” construct, the pledgor retains title to the rehypothecated asset at all times, even when it is sold outright in the market, whereas in an English law “re-use” construct, title to the asset passes outright to the person re-using it, and is replaced by a debt obligation to return an equivalent asset. Economically the two constructs are the same; it is just that the NY one makes no logical sense at all, while the English one makes perfect sense. Don’t @ me Americans: you know this is true.

Assets a counterparty posts you as collateral — especially as variation margin — are meant to be credit support for the amount that counterparty would owe you (your “exposure”) if you closed out the transaction today — the replacement value of the transaction, so to say.

This is all fine from a credit perspective, but there is a funding angle, too. That exposure is rather like indebtedness — it is as if you have lent your counterparty that money. If you are a prime broker, you probably have lent your counterparty that money. This is money your treasury department will gleefully, usuriously, charge you for using.

Now if only you could use these assets as collateral you owe someone else, or convert them into cash to repay your treasury department — like you could if that collateral was title-transferred to you — wouldn’t that be a fine thing? Well, as long as the collateral is only pledged to you, you can’t: it isn’t your asset to sell.

But this is exactly what rehypothecation allows you to do. But at a cost: the pledgor, who used to own the asset and could reclaim it in your insolvency (on settling its outstanding indebtedness to you) now becomes your unsecured creditor for the return of the “equivalent” asset. If you go bust, the pledgor must file a claim like all other creditors for the net value of the asset. This is why the pledgor will be grateful for the effects of close-out netting.

Rehypothecation in the 2016 NY Law VM CSA

This is the classic part of your security interest 2016 NY Law VM CSA that converts it into a title transfer CSA, meaning — cough, as with much New York law frippery — that you might as well not bother with calling this a pledge or security interest in the first place.

So I give my asset to you, right, carefully only pledging it as security for my indebtedness to you, and protect myself from your credit risk because I retain beneficial ownership of the asset. It is mine, not yours, and should you explode into a thousand points of light, then, once I have settled my trading account with your administrator, I can have my asset back.

Right?

Except that, the moment you get it, you may unconditionally sell my asset, absolutely, to anyone else you want to, at any time, or actually, damn the torpedoes, just take it onto your own balance sheet and hold it in your own name. Whereupon, my claim against you is for the return of my asset that you no longer have, or have put into your general bankruptcy estate, so you would have to go and buy it in the market, but since you have blown up, you can’t realistically do that, so I am, after all, your unsecured creditor and all this talk of security interests is a nonce.

Note that the Secured Party’s right to flog off the Pledgor’s asset evaporates should it commit an Event of Default, Early Termination Event or one of the 2016 NY Law VM CSA’s Specified Conditions but — courtesy of Paragraph 7(ii), the Secured Party’s right to call a default as a result of the Pledgor continuing to flog off its assets — there doesn’t seem to be an obligation to buy back assets once they’re sold, by the way — only kicks in after 5 Local Business Days, by which stage even the guys disconsolately wandering around outside the office clutching Iron Mountain boxes will have pushed off.

Note the odd coda: references to Posted Collateral (VM) etc — should be deemed to assume you still own it, even though if you don’t? This is the dead giveaway here. This may be an attempt to avoid having to create an “Equivalent Credit Support” concept, though since ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ went full metal jacket on that enterprise as long ago as in the 1995 CSA, it is not like we don’t have suitable, road-tested — if a little anal — language.

Oh, what sad times we live in.