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In a Nutshell™ Section 1.4:
Template:Nutshell 2006 ISDA Definitions 1.4
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2006 ISDA Definitions: The full text of Section 1.4:
Section 1.4. Business Day. “Business Day” means, in respect of any date that is specified in these 2006 Definitions or in a Confirmation to be subject to adjustment in accordance with any applicable Business Day Convention, a day on which commercial banks and foreign exchange markets settle payments and are open for general business (including dealings in foreign exchange markets and foreign currency deposits) in the place(s) and on the days specified for that purpose in the related Confirmation, a TARGET Settlement Day (if “TARGET” or “TARGET Settlement Day” is specified for that purpose in the related Confirmation), a New York Fed Business Day (if “Federal Reserve”, “New York Fed” or “New York Fed Business Day” is specified for that purpose in the related Confirmation), a NYSE Business Day (if “New York Stock Exchange”, “NYSE”, or “NYSE Business Day” is specified for that purpose in the related Confirmation) and, if place(s) and days, or such terms, are not so specified, a day:
- (a) on which commercial banks and foreign exchange markets settle payments and are open for general business (including dealings in foreign exchange and foreign currency deposits) in the same currency as the payment obligation that is payable on or calculated by reference to that date in:
- (i) The financial center(s) indicated for such currency in Section 1.5 (Financial Centers);
- (ii) The financial center(s) indicated for such currency in Section 1.6 (Certain Business Days) and
- (iii) The principal financial center of such currency, if the currency is other than those currencies specified in Section 1.7 (Currencies); and
- (b) that is a TARGET Settlement Day, if the currency of the payment obligation that is payable on or calculated by reference to that date is the euro; and
- (c) that is a Business Day or TARGET Settlement Day, as the case may be, in respect of each relevant currency, where the payment obligations that are payable on or calculated by reference to that date are denominated in different currencies.
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In the abstract it seems, doesn’t it, such a simple idea.
But you know by now that the high-powered analytical microscope of an ISDA drafting committee can turn the most basic intellectual frippery into a cascade of text, especially where, at the edges, there are points of ambiguity.
And, in a contractual framework as eager as ISDA’s is to span the globe, be assured there will be ambiguity, should you want to judge where, or by reference to what local entrepreneurs are expecting to turn up for work. A principal financial center for whom? A payer? Payee? Sender? Receiver? And for the purposes of doing what? Paying? Simply being in the office to receive your correspondence?
And, aye, that is before we even get to that rebellious sui generis the Euro, which doesn’t have a principal financial center (or, at any rate, has dozens of the buggers, each with its own cultural peculiarities and idiosyncratic obsessions of rest, relaxation and days off) and which has thus developed its own magical settlement system, ignorant of its bankers’ diverse recreational urges, to keep the financial gears of the great federal project oiled and turning.
And here the committee applies the range of its arsenal: inclusos, relevantses, applicables, (s)es, in accordance with, in respect of, and a few on or by reference tos in the closing, dying stages, when the indefatigable lungs of even those splendid draftspeoples are all but spent, their owners lying blue on the carpet.
So you might, if reaching for something easy, refer instead to the comparatively blunt concept of a Banking Day, where the only referent is the city to which you refer, it being understood that all cities have banks, and all bankers like to have weekends and holidays.