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*'''[[Credit]]''': To credit a contract is a defensive play and the name of the game is, to encode as many snares, booby-traps, tripwires and hundred-ton weights into the document as will be needed in a time of apocalypse. It will not matter that 75% of those contingencies should not, in the life of our universe, come about,<ref>For the obstreperous universe has a habit of playing tricks with people who are meant to know better. This is known as [[Goldman|David Viniar]]’s, or [[Long-Term Capital Management]]’s folly.</ref> nor that Credit would not, in the life of that universe, dream of actually using most the remainder: the exercise is fully hypothetical. For the [[credit]] team’s perspicacity is measured not in ''prospect'', about what in a sensible universe ''might'' happen, but in ''hindsight'' about what, in the mad universe we do inhabit, ''did'' happen. Since at the inception of a relationship this is entirely unpredictable, the beleaguered credit officer has no choice but to select all ordinance available to her, to Sales’ extreme frustration. | *'''[[Credit]]''': To credit a contract is a defensive play and the name of the game is, to encode as many snares, booby-traps, tripwires and hundred-ton weights into the document as will be needed in a time of apocalypse. It will not matter that 75% of those contingencies should not, in the life of our universe, come about,<ref>For the obstreperous universe has a habit of playing tricks with people who are meant to know better. This is known as [[Goldman|David Viniar]]’s, or [[Long-Term Capital Management]]’s folly.</ref> nor that Credit would not, in the life of that universe, dream of actually using most the remainder: the exercise is fully hypothetical. For the [[credit]] team’s perspicacity is measured not in ''prospect'', about what in a sensible universe ''might'' happen, but in ''hindsight'' about what, in the mad universe we do inhabit, ''did'' happen. Since at the inception of a relationship this is entirely unpredictable, the beleaguered credit officer has no choice but to select all ordinance available to her, to Sales’ extreme frustration. | ||
*'''[[Documentation unit|Docs]]''': The documentation team just wants to know who to ask for permission to do what, when. Their line management will be focused only on turnover of their portfolio, how many days delinquent it is. This is a shame, but a consequence of our [[modernist]] obsession with lean production management. It is all very well to set up your assembly line as if it were punting out [[Toyota Corolla]]<nowiki/>s, but your suppliers need to be on message, and generally they are not: the process is captive of fantastical terms imposed by Credit as per the above, rendered in language confected by [[legal]], buffeted by the [[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions|incommensurable]] frame of reference adopted by their counterparty and, more usually, its legal advisors. | *'''[[Documentation unit|Docs]]''': The documentation team just wants to know who to ask for permission to do what, when. Their line management will be focused only on turnover of their portfolio, how many days delinquent it is. This is a shame, but a consequence of our [[modernist]] obsession with lean production management. It is all very well to set up your assembly line as if it were punting out [[Toyota Corolla]]<nowiki/>s, but your suppliers need to be on message, and generally they are not: the process is captive of fantastical terms imposed by Credit as per the above, rendered in language confected by [[legal]], buffeted by the [[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions|incommensurable]] frame of reference adopted by their counterparty and, more usually, its legal advisors. | ||
*[[Buy-side legal eagle|'''External legal counsel''']]: The opposing side’s lawyers are mainly interested in showing how clever and useful they are to their client. This they can only do by '' | *[[Buy-side legal eagle|'''External legal counsel''']]: The opposing side’s lawyers are mainly interested in showing how clever and useful they are to their client. This they can only do by ''hotly insisting you chang the terms of your contract''. This was first articulated in [[Otto Büchstein|Büchstein]]’s articulation of legal existentialism: [[Scribo, ergo sum|''scribo, ergo sum'']].<ref>[[I mark up, therefore I am|I mark-up, therefore I am]]</ref> Now, the more rigorously you Benchmark your baseline terms to the market, the less scope there will for show-boating mark-up: to be sure, one can never entirely rid a document of fussy clarifications and [[For the avoidance of doubt|doubt-avoidance]] parentheticals, but you can minimise them by careful and elegant document design. But this rubs directly against [[Credit officer|Credit]]’s prerogative, above, which is to move the document as far from that point of tired capitulation, and as far back up the hill towards the Olympian ideal of perfect risk management as they can. Since buyside counsel will have struck their camp an equivalent distance in the opposite direction, down the hill, this leaves a wide tract of no-man’s land as a joyful playground legal rent-seeking: they can all mark-up, strike-out, thrust, parry and counter-thrust to their hearts’ consent. Clearly, if the opposing camps start out five miles from each other, they cannot know when, whether or on what terms their respective minds will meet, or if they even ''will''. Experience will say there is a fair chance, but exactly ''where'' will differ in ever case and, by the time they get there, the location will be so rubble-strewn, shelled, pock-marked and riddled with bulletholes that it will more closely resemble the ruins of Dresden than an agreement between amicable merchants. | ||
*'''[[Trading]]''': | *'''[[Trading]]''': | ||
*'''[[Operations]]''': | *'''[[Operations]]''': | ||