ISDA Anatomy™
In a Nutshell™ Section 5(a)(viii):
- 5(a)(viii) Merger Without Assumption. The party (or a Credit Support Provider) merges with or transfers or all or substantially all its assets to another entity and:―
- (1) the resulting entity does not assume all the original party’s obligations under this Agreement (or Credit Support Document); or
- (2) the Credit Support Document does cover the resulting party’s obligations under this Agreement.
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2002 ISDA full text of Section 5(a)(viii):
- 5(a)(viii) Merger Without Assumption. The party or any Credit Support Provider of such party consolidates or amalgamates with, or merges with or into, or transfers all or substantially all its assets to, or reorganises, reincorporates or reconstitutes into or as, another entity and, at the time of such consolidation, amalgamation, merger, transfer, reorganisation, reincorporation or reconstitution:―
- 5(a)(viii)(1) the resulting, surviving or transferee entity fails to assume all the obligations of such party or such Credit Support Provider under this Agreement or any Credit Support Document to which it or its predecessor was a party; or
- 5(a)(viii)(2) the benefits of any Credit Support Document fail to extend (without the consent of the other party) to the performance by such resulting, surviving or transferee entity of its obligations under this Agreement.
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Click here for the text of Section 5(a)(viii) in the 1992 ISDA
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This can be triggered if:
- The resulting party repudiates any outstanding Transactions under the ISDA Master Agreement; or
- (in the case of a transfer of assets) a small rump of Transactions are left in the original entity, and not transferred at to the new entity. Now you would think this ought to be covered by Credit Event Upon Merger, wouldn't you, because if there were no deterioration in credit and the transferring entity was still around and hadn’t winked out of existence then,
There's not a lot of case law on it. Some say 90%. Some say 75%. Some people — your correspondent included — say “shoot me”.