Template:M gen 2002 ISDA 6(e)

Section 6(e)(i) Events of Default (Early Termination Payments)

One thing to say: this is one of the main places where the 1992 ISDA and the 2002 ISDA are very different. The 2002 Master Agreement dramatically simplifies and, after 20 odd years of curmudgeonly refusal to accept this, even the Americans now seem to acknowledge, improves the process of closing out an ISDA.

(Want to see how awful the 1992 is? Go here).

First terminate Transactions...

The effect of Section 6(e)(i) is that in closing out an ISDA Master Agreement, first you must terminate all Transactions to arrive at a Close-out Amount for each one.

The Close-out Amount is the replacement cost for the Transaction, assuming all payments up to the Early Termination Date have been made — but in a closeout scenario, of course, Q.E.D. some of those will not have been made — being the reason you need to close out.

Hence the converse concept of “Unpaid Amounts”, being amounts that should have been paid or delivered under the Transaction on or before the termination date, but weren’t (hence, we presume, why good sir is closing out the ISDA Master Agreement in the first place).

So once you have your theoretical replacement cost for each Transaction, you then have to tot up all the Unpaid Amounts that had fallen due but had not been paid under those Transactions at the time the Transactions terminated. These include, obviously, failures by the Defaulting Party, but also amounts the Non-defaulting Party didn’t pay when it relied on the flawed asset provision of Section 2(a)(iii) to withhold amounts it would otherwise have been due to pay under the Transaction after the default but before it was terminated.

...then calculate net Early Termination Amount

The close out itself happens under Section 6(e) of the ISDA Master Agreement and the recourse is to a net sum. Netting does not happen under the Transactions — on the theory of the game there are no outstanding Transactions at the point of netting; just payables.

Therefore, if your credit support (particularly guarantees or letters of credit) explicitly reference amounts due under specific Transactions, you may lose any credit support at precisely the point you need it.

That would be a bummer. Further commentary on the Guarantee page.

Section 6(e)(ii) Termination Events (Early Termination Payments)

Where the close-out follows a Termination Event, we are generally in “well, it’s just one of those things; terribly sorry it had to end like this” territory rather than the apocalyptic collapse into insolvency or turpitude one expects in an Event of Default, and accompanying high-dudgeon, so the path to resolution is a little more genteel, and winding. Secondly — unless it affects all outstanding Transactions, which by no means all Termination Events do — the upshot is not necessarily a final reckoning, but rather the retirement of only those problematic Affected Transactions. The rest sail serenely on. (To remind you all, the customised Additional Termination Events that the parties have imposed on each other tend to look and behave more like Events of Default. Pre-printed Termination Events have more to do with mergers, taxes and law changes that were neither party’s fault as such).

So first, who is the Affected Party, to whom the event has happened? If there is only one then the Affected Transaction termination process that upon an Event of Default and the Non-Affected Party will have the option whether or not to call the event at all, and will generally be in the driving seat if it does. If, however, the Termination Event in question is an Illegality or Force Majeure Event, there’s a further softening and the Non-Affected Party must use a mid-market levels derived from quotations which disregard the value of the Non-Affected Party’s creditworthiness or credit support — again, the reason being, “look, this is just one of those things, man”. It isn’t about you.

If both sides are Affected Parties (likely upon an Illegality or Tax Event and, to a lesser extent, a Tax Event Upon Merger each side works out its own Close-out Amounts and they split the difference.

Section 6(e)(iii) Adjustment for Bankruptcy (Early Termination Payments)

Section 6(e)(iii) is somewhat gnomic, but is designed to build in some flex to allow for the weird things that happen in the netherworld of corporate insolvency, especially where your Early Termination Date happened, thanks to its automatic trigger, without anyone knowing about it.

If an AET has been “dark triggered” (this is an expression I made up to cover an event that has happened to the contract by operation of circumstance without the knowledge of either party), and therefore the parties (especially the Non-Defaulting Party) have blithely carried on with their business of making payments and deliveries unaware that the technical insolvency of one of them meant all payment and delivery obligations were suspended — Section 2(a)(iii) and all that — then you will find you have the opposite of Unpaid Amounts: you will have overpaid Amounts. This provision half-heartedly allows you to adjust to take account of them, without saying how: can you credit their full amount back? Do you have to apply some recovery rate?

We suspect most counterparties will credit the full amount and wait, with arguments pre-marshalled about insolvency set-off and restitution for money had and received, for use should the insolvency administrator comes at them.

Section 6(e)(iv) Adjustment for Illegality or Force Majeure Event

If you have a legitimate excuse for failing to pay — that it was due to aqueous invasion, rust, operation of trade winds, or the mendacity of His Majesty’s Royal Enemies etc and therefore a Force Majeure Event, or payment would have been Illegal, then it isn’t an Event of Default, none of this closing out of Terminated Transactions applies — yet — but you are still left with this odd situation where you have what looks like, but otherwise technically wouldn’t be, an Unpaid Amount, and also nothing to do with it.

Well, ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ abhors a vacuum.

Section 6(e)(iv) fills it. Firstly, it says such a non-paid amount is an Unpaid Amount, even though you weren’t required to pay it, and secondly, it allows you therefore to save it up, for any subsequent Early Termination Date that might arise (should the operating Illegality or Force Majeure Event not lift), and it allows you to also accrue interest on the Unpaid Amount due in the mean time, so you don’t get stung for your carry cost should the circumstances resolve before it becomes an Early Termination Date.

Section 6(e)(v) Pre-Estimate (Early Termination Payments)

From “the lady doth protest too much” school of contractual drafting, a neat and theoretically vacuous attempt to ensure that Early Termination Amounts determined under an ISDA Master Agreement are not seen as (unenforceable) penalty clause, but rather a liquidated damages clause — i.e., a “genuine pre-estimate of loss” caused by a breach of contract, as enunciated by Lord Dunedin in that famous contract case on penalty clauses, Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co Ltd v New Garage & Motor Co Ltd.

But it either is or it isn’t. As it happens, it probably is a liquidated damages clause, but the parties agreeing in a standard form that it is one doesn’t really help that analysis.