Interest and Compensation - ISDA Provision
2002 ISDA Master Agreement
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Crosscheck: 9(h) in a Nutshell™
Original text
See ISDA Comparison for a comparison between the 1992 ISDA and the 2002 ISDA.
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Comparisons
There is no strict equivalent to Section 9(h) in the 1992 ISDA. But see Section 2(e), which is a half-arsed attempt at the same thing.
Friends of the JC will know that “half-arsed” isn’t always bad, of course — it can be quite good, in fact — characterising, as it does, the sum total of the JC’s paltry achievements on this barren rock — and in any case, it leaves something to the imagination and we all like a little private intellectual space to indulge our whims and fantasies every now and then, don’t we?
As you step through this monstrosity, going to town on devilish details as it does, you may find it leads you directly into the “I’m sorry I asked” file.
Are you sorry yet? Well, you did ask.
Basics
Section 9(h) deals with the various scenarios where interest — over and above the amounts stated to be payable as Fixed Rate and Floating Rate Options under a given Transaction — might apply to deferred and delayed payments under the ISDA.
Those scenarios are:
Payment default: Someone fails to pay money under a Transaction when they are meant to.
Delivery default: Someone fails to deliver a non-money asset under a Transaction when they are meant to.
Non-default deferral: Some other externality intervenes to make payment impossible, which does not amount to default: a market disruption, a Force Majeure Event, a forced suspension of obligations for reasons beyond the control or fault of either party.
The innocent and the damned
In that magically over-complicated way that is the blast signature of ISDA’s crack drafting squad™, the interest rate that applies to delinquency differs depending on the reason for it; the more “at fault” a party is, the more punitive the rate.
“Innocent” deferrals attract a rate called the Applicable Deferral Rates. The more punitive one are called Default Rates. (This, by the way, is one of the significant “upgrades” from the 1992 ISDA, which had a rather half-hearted penalty interest provision in Section 2(e)).
Assets versus cash
Also, the calculation basis is more complicated if the deferral involves the delivery of an asset since you need a way of figuring out the market value of the asset on which interest can be said to accrue.
Waiting periods
And since one kind of deferral can morph into another — upon the expiry of a Waiting Period, for example — the exact computation of deferrals is fraught. You might even think that the ’squad’s quest for infinite exactitude in a scenario which in many cases will include a bankrupt debtor who isn’t going to pay you much of what you are owed in any case, is a bit overdone. We couldn’t possibly comment.
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