Local Business Day - ISDA Provision

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2002 ISDA Master Agreement

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Local Business Day in a Nutshell

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Local Business Day in all its glory

Local Business Day” means
(a) in relation to any obligation under Section 2(a)(i), a General Business Day in the place or places specified in the relevant Confirmation and a day on which a relevant settlement system is open or operating as specified in the relevant Confirmation or, if a place or a settlement system is not so specified, as otherwise agreed by the parties in writing or determined pursuant to provisions contained, or incorporated by reference, in this Agreement,
(b) for the purpose of determining when a Waiting Period expires, a General Business Day in the place where the event or circumstance that constitutes or gives rise to the Illegality or Force Majeure Event, as the case may be, occurs,
(c) in relation to any other payment, a General Business Day in the place where the relevant account is located and, if different, in the principal financial centre, if any, of the currency of such payment and, if that currency does not have a single recognised principal financial centre, a day on which the settlement system necessary to accomplish such payment is open,
(d) in relation to any notice or other communication, including notice contemplated under Section 5(a)(i), a General Business Day (or a day that would have been a General Business Day but for the occurrence of an event or circumstance which would, if it occurred with respect to payment, delivery or compliance related to a Transaction, constitute or give rise to an Illegality or a Force Majeure Event) in the place specified in the address for notice provided by the recipient and, in the case of a notice contemplated by Section 2(b), in the place where the relevant new account is to be located and
(e) in relation to Section 5(a)(v)(2), a General Business Day in the relevant locations for performance with respect to such Specified Transaction.

Line breaks added to improve comprehension

Related agreements and comparisons

Click here for the text of Section Local Business Day in the 1992 ISDA
Click to compare this section in the 1992 ISDA and 2002 ISDA.

Resources and Navigation

This provision in the 1992

Resources Wikitext | Nutshell wikitext | 1992 ISDA wikitext | 2002 vs 1992 Showdown | 2006 ISDA Definitions | 2008 ISDA | JC’s ISDA code project
Navigation Preamble | 1(a) (b) (c) | 2(a) (b) (c) (d) | 3(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) | 4(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) | 55(a) Events of Default: 5(a)(i) Failure to Pay or Deliver 5(a)(ii) Breach of Agreement 5(a)(iii) Credit Support Default 5(a)(iv) Misrepresentation 5(a)(v) Default Under Specified Transaction 5(a)(vi) Cross Default 5(a)(vii) Bankruptcy 5(a)(viii) Merger Without Assumption 5(b) Termination Events: 5(b)(i) Illegality 5(b)(ii) Force Majeure Event 5(b)(iii) Tax Event 5(b)(iv) Tax Event Upon Merger 5(b)(v) Credit Event Upon Merger 5(b)(vi) Additional Termination Event (c) (d) (e) | 6(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) | 7 | 8(a) (b) (c) (d) | 9(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) | 10 | 11 | 12(a) (b) | 13(a) (b) (c) (d) | 14 |

Index: Click to expand:

Overview

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The keen will have noticed that “Local Business Day” under an English law CSA is defined quite separately from “Local Business Day” as it is defined under the ISDA Master Agreement itself, whereas a Local Business Day under a New York law CSA, while separately defining the term, only goes on to defer to the original definition of LBD in the ISDA Master Agreement, pausing only to clarify that references to “payment” in the ISDA Master Agreement definiton are deemed to include Transfers under the CSA.

Why ISDA’s British crack drafting squad™ couldn’t have done this too, we can only wonder.

Summary

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There is no plain “Business Day” in the ISDA Master Agreement

Even old stagers are occasionally surprised to rediscover that ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ didn’t define the expression “Business Day” in the ISDA Master Agreement: only “Local Business Day” and “General Business Day” (and even the latter of these is only used in the definition of Local Business Day). It is, of course, defined in the 2006 ISDA Definitions and their spiritual successors the 2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions — but these operate only at Confirmation/Transaction level. (in fairness, the first ISDA definitions were published before the 1992 ISDA, so there was never much of a gap)

But there must have been an uneasy period where there was no Business Day

“General Business Day” and “Local Business Day”

The defined term General Business Day appears in only one place in the ISDA Master Agreement: the definition of Local Business Day. It is this:

General Business Day” means a day on which commercial banks are open for general business (including dealings in foreign exchange and foreign currency deposits).

Thereby, a short definition is used to prop up a longer one. You might think “business day” is kind of a clear-enough, well-understood-enough term that it shouldn’t need to be defined at all, but that is not how ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ operates.

Local Business Day and Local Delivery Day

What is the difference between a “Local Business Day” and a “Local Delivery Day”?

Local Business Day is a lot more fiddly, and context dependent, for one thing. As per our nutshell summary, what counts as a Local Business Day depends on who is asking: for performing general obligations it looks to the Transaction Confirmation; for Waiting Periods it depends where the triggering event occurs, for payments it depends where the account is located, for communications it depends on the location of the recipient.

A Local Delivery Day — which comes up only in when considering whether one has failed to deliver a non-cash security of some kind (Section 5(a)(i)) or, even though ostensibly having failed to dliver it, you haven’t yet technically failed to deliver it, on account of an intervening Illegality or Force Majeure which has triggered a Waiting Period before that failure to deliver becomes an official Failure to Pay or Deliver.

CSA relevance

Local Business Day is also defined in the 1995 CSA (and its successors, dependents, friends and relations), as it the related term Regular Settlement Day. Which makes for fun, as premium subscribers will see below.

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See also

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The many gorgeous, multi-hued variations on the business day can be enjoyed as follows:

ISDA extended universe

References