Template:M summ 2002 ISDA 6(a)

Everyone’s hair will be on fire

This is likely to be a time where the market is dislocated, your credit officer is running around with her hair is on fire, your normally affable counterparty is suddenly diffident or evasive, and your online docs database has crashed because everyone in the firm is interrogating it at once.

This is also one time the commercial imperative will count for little, since you are terminating your trading relationship altogether and with extreme prejudice. Your normally iterated game of prisoner’s dilemma has turned into a single round game. Game theorists among you will know immediately that the calculus is therefore very different, and much, much less appealing.

So: good luck keeping your head while all around you are losing theirs.

Close-out sequence

Once you have designated an Early Termination Date for your ISDA Master Agreement, proceed to 6(c) to understand the Effect of Designation. Or learn about it in one place with the NC.’s handy cribsheet, “closing out an ISDA”.

The Notices provisions in Section 12 are relevant to how you may serve this notice. In a nutshell, in writing, by hand. Don’t email it, fax it, telex it, or send it by any kind of pony express or carrier pigeon unless your pigeon/pony is willing to provide an affidavit of service.