Letter of Credit - GMSLA Provision
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2010 Global Master Securities Lending Agreement
Clause Letter of Credit in a Nutshell™ Use at your own risk, campers!
Full text of Clause Letter of Credit
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The Letter of Credit concept — a painful, formalistic and old-fashioned one, truth be told — didn’t make it from the 2010 GMSLA into the 2018 Pledge GMSLA, the theory being that the Borrower is engaged in raising finance - in the shape of liquid assets with decent credit quality that it can give back to its Treasury department, against the collateral of its portfolio of equities, convertible bonds and other dross it holds as collateral for its own margin lending activity. so what it would be doing collateralising such a trade with a bank-issued Letter of Credit you’d really have to wonder.
Summary
... and a Letter of Credit is what, exactly?
An old fashioned form of credit support. A bank writes an unconditional letter promising to pay a (usually large) sum on money on demand and without argument to a third party on behalf of a client. This gets small companies a bit of breathing space with trade creditors. Banks charge through the nose for them: they are a form of committed funding.
Lots of formal rules and legal form-obeisance.