Template:M summ GMRA 10

The dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime

More interesting than the Events of Default that are there are the ones that are not: There is no:

• Cross Default
• Default under Specified Transaction equivalent
• Credit Support Default equivalent
• Merger without Assumption equivalent
• Illegality equivalent
• Tax Event equivalent
• Credit Event Upon Merger equivalent
• Tax Event Upon Merger equivalent

Why not?: Unlike an ISDA Master Agreement, generally, securities financing transactions are generally short-dated (if repos) or callable on notice (if stock loans) and (unlike an ISDA, where margin is a function of an independent credit support arrangement which may or may not be there) daily margin is a structure feature of the transaction. If your counterparty suffers any kind of credit deterioration, your margin (or its failure to pay it) should cover you, and if it doesn’t, you can immediately — or at least quickly — get out of your exposure. If they unwind okay—great. If they don’t, you have them bang to rights on a Failure to Pay. Simples.

Your more perfidious counterparties might want to start crow-barring these events in — at least, ones like Illegality — especially if you, like many brokers, are in the habit of doing trades on term. An Illegality event ought not poop the nest, but a credit deterioration-related default events like DUST or Cross Default may, seeing as the very point of the term trade is to prove to your accountants you have stable financing of your margin loan operations.