Template:M summ GMSLA 11.7

Trick for young players alert

This looks like the only place where LIBOR is mentioned — harmless accrual of small amounts on professional fees — but the far more important interest accrual clause is Clause 15 (Interest on Outstanding Payments) which awards interest on any missed payment under the agreement, and defers to the rate agreed here in Clause 11.7. Now why you would cross refer the main interest rate clause, Interest on Outstanding Payments, to some crappy little aside, buried deep in the enforcement clause, about interest on incurred professional fees, rather than referring the crappy little aside to the main Interest on Outstanding Payments clause we can only wonder about, if it were not to trip up people like yours truly. So be warned.

This bit is just about incurred interest on professional fees

Clause 11.7 is the Default Interest provision of the 2010 GMSLA. Note a potentially troublesome reference to LIBOR in there, seeing as LIBOR is being phased out, though it is only a fall back, and only for Default Interest on its legal fees (once a party has failed to meet its payment obligations) so, while there are more cataclysmic threats to the capital markets than this, that won’t stop financial services firms across the western world diverting key internal risk management resource towards remediating it, generating 18 months’ meaningful employment for an army of contractors of course.

Note:

• This only captures interest on professional expenses incurred in closing out a 2010 GMSLA. It corresponds to Clause 10(f) of the Global Master Repurchase Agreement, which is written in similar terms. For the more general Interest on Outstanding Payments you must see Clause 15, which is really where this clause should be, if legal design were any kind of priority for ISLA’s crack drafting squad™.
• This would not capture a “mini close-out” under 9.1(b) or 9.2(b) as a result of a settlement fail under normal market procedures. These are treated as if they were Events of Default, but they are deemed not to be Events of Default. For those you pay the innocent party’s actual interest costs, not its theoretical ones, so there is no need to refer to a benchmark. But see also Clause 15.