Suspension Event - IETA Provision

IETA Emissions Trading Master Agreement A Jolly Contrarian owner’s manual™ Suspension Event and 13 in a Nutshell™ The JC’s Nutshell™ summary of this term has moved uptown to the subscription-only ninja tier. For the cost of ½ a weekly 🍺 you can get it here. Sign up at Substack. You can even ask questions! Ask about it here. Suspension Event and 13 in all its glory “Suspension Event”: A Suspension Event occurs when, on any date, a Party to the Agreement is unable to perform its Transfer or acceptance obligations under and in accordance with a Transaction through a Relevant Registry as a result of the application of any of the following: (a) an absence of Registry Operation; or (b) the occurrence of an Administrator Event. 13.4 Suspension Event. 13.4(a) Upon the occurrence of a Suspension Event, the Party affected by the Suspension Event shall, as soon as practicable by written notice, notify the other Party of the commencement of the Suspension Event. To the extent available to the Party affected by the Suspension Event, it shall also provide details of the Suspension Event including a non-binding estimate of the duration of its inability to perform its obligations due to the Suspension Event. 13.4(b) Where a Suspension Event occurs, the obligations of both Parties, which would otherwise be required to be performed with respect to the relevant Transaction, shall be suspended for the duration of the Suspension Event. Subject to paragraph (c) below, upon the Suspension Event ceasing to exist both Parties will resume full performance of their obligations under this Agreement in respect of the relevant Transaction (including for the avoidance of doubt any suspended obligations) as soon as possible but no later than the day that is ten (10) Delivery Banking Days thereafter or, if earlier, three (3) Delivery Banking Days prior to the End of Validity Period Reconciliation Deadline (such date being the “Delayed Delivery Date”). For the avoidance of doubt, where a Delivery Date is adjusted in accordance with this Clause 13.4(b), then the use of the term “Delivery Date” elsewhere in this Agreement shall be construed to be a reference to the Delayed Delivery Date. 13.4(c) In the event that Period Traded Allowances are Transferred to the Receiving Party on or before the Delayed Delivery Date following the occurrence of a Suspension Event as contemplated by sub-clause (a) above, the Receiving Party agrees to pay the Delivering Party the Contract Amount adjusted by the Cost of Carry Amount. For the avoidance of doubt, any adjustment of the Contract Amount will be identified in the relevant Statementsent to the Receiving Party. 13.4(d) Where a Suspension Event continues to exist on the Long Stop Date, Clause 13.2(a) (No Termination Payment) shall apply and the suspended Transaction shall be deemed an FM Affected Transaction and terminated as an FM Affected Transaction on the Long Stop Date. edit Comparison See our natty emissions comparison table between the IETA, EFET and ISDA versions of emissions trading docs Resources and Navigation Emissions trading documentation ISDA: EU Anatomy • EU Wikitext • EU Nutshell (premium) • UK Anatomy • UK Wikitext (to be merged into EU Anatomy) IETA: IETA Master Agreement • IETA Wikitext • IETA Nutshell (premium) EFET: EFET Allowances Appendix • EFET Allowances Wikitext • EFET Nutshell (premium) Index: Click ᐅ to expand: ISDA Emissions TOC EUA Annex - Premium Emissions Pro tip: for tons of information about EU ETS and EU financial services regulation see Michał Głowacki’s magnificent emissions-euets.com website. Premium version of this page

Overview

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The definition of Suspension Event is more or less the same in all three emissions trading documentation regimes. Compare:
ISDA: Suspension Event
IETA: Suspension Event
EFET: Suspension Event
As an extra treat, here are some deltaviews:
IETA vs EFET: comparison
ISDA vs IETA: comparison

Definition

The obvious comparison is with Suspension Event in the ISDA EU Emissions Annex, which is strikingly similar:

Suspension Event: Means any date a party to the Agreement is unable to perform its delivery or acceptance obligations under and in accordance with an EU Emissions Allowance Transaction and the Scheme through a Relevant Registry as a result of the occurrence of any of the following events:

(i) absence of Registry Operation; or

(ii) the occurrence of an Administrator Event.

Clause

You will recognise “Suspension Event” from the IETA Master Agreement and the ISDA EU Emissions Annex, and “Force Majeure” from the IETA Master Agreement and the EFET Allowances Appendix, and indirectly in the ISDA EU Emissions Annex, where it goes by the name of “Settlement Disruption Event”, but is largely the same.

Summary

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IETA Master Agreement versus ISDA Emissions Annex

The odd thing is that while the Suspension Events are virtually identical between the IETA Master Agreement and ISDA EU Emissions Annex, their Settlement Disruption Event regimes could hardly be more different — in that the ISDA annex has one, and the IETA doesn’t.

Process

Governed by Clause 13.4:
(a) Affected party gives notice.
(b) Obligations are suspended until the relevant piece of infrastructure is functioning again, after which there is a 10 Delivery Banking Days grace period — which seems rather long, truth be known, but is truncated to 3 business days before any intervening End of Validity Period Reconciliation Deadline — to resume
(c) There is a Cost of Carry Amount adjustment reflecting the delay to the scheduled delivery date. (d) If you are suspended past the Long Stop Date — as for the ISDA EU Emissions Annex, and arbitrary set of dates two or more years after the originally scheduled delivery dates — you put a line through whatever obligations are left of the trade, but don’t have to return amounts or deliveries already made (to say nothing of collateral — though possibly the return of collateral is implied by the revaluation of the net exposure under the IETA Master Agreement. Or might have been, were there a collateral annex to the IETA Master Agreement.

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Clause

Definition of Force Majeure

Functionally, the definitions of “Force Majeure” under Clause 7.1 the EFET Annex and Clause 13 of the IETA, and the definition of “Settlement Disruption Event” under (d)(i)(4) of the ISDA Emissions Annex are the same — here is a comparison between IETA and EFET, and here is a comparison between EFET and ISDA — so you do wonder whose idea it was to call it something different.

Let us speculate: the IETA was written first, is independent of the ISDA universe, and for reasons best known to IETA’s crack drafting squad™, they decided to call this a “Force Majeure”. Being an event beyond the reasonable control of the affected party there is some logic to this.

ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ was, as usual, late to the “novel asset class” party and, as it couldn’t find a spot, decided to park its tanks on IETA’s lawn, borrowing much of the technology wholesale but unable to call this event a Force Majeure because the ISDA Master Agreement already has a Force Majeure Event, this is quite different — for whatever reason, the timings are a lot longer — and that would confuse people even beyond ISDA’s tolerance for confusing people.

So ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ went with its product specific “stuff happens” label, “Settlement Disruption Event”. In any case, to make your lives easier, “Force Majeure - Emissions Annex Provision” redirects to Settlement Disruption Event. The JC’s nice like that.

The differences are to account for the architecture and nomenclature of the different master agreements, though the IETA has a conflict clause favouring Suspension Event over Force Majeure/Settlement Disruption Event, which the EFET does not.

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• The JC’s famous Nutshell™ summary of this clause

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See also

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