Threshold Amount - ISDA Provision

From The Jolly Contrarian
Jump to navigation Jump to search
2002 ISDA Master Agreement

A Jolly Contrarian owner’s manual™

Threshold Amount in a Nutshell

The JC’s Nutshell summaries are moving to the subscription-only ninja tier. For the cost of ½ a weekly 🍺 you can get them here. Sign up at Substack.

Threshold Amount in all its glory

Threshold Amount” means the amount, if any, specified as such in the Schedule.

Related agreements and comparisons

Click here for the text of Section Threshold Amount in the 1992 ISDA
Template:Isdadiff Threshold Amount

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 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Events of Default: 5(a)(i) Failure to Pay or Deliver5(a)(ii) Breach of Agreement5(a)(iii) Credit Support Default5(a)(iv) Misrepresentation5(a)(v) Default Under Specified Transaction5(a)(vi) Cross Default5(a)(vii) Bankruptcy5(a)(viii) Merger without Assumption
Termination Events: 5(b)(i) Illegality5(b)(ii) Force Majeure Event5(b)(iii) Tax Event5(b)(iv) Tax Event Upon Merger5(b)(v) Credit Event Upon Merger5(b)(vi) Additional Termination Event

Index: Click to expand:

Overview

edit

Not to be confused with Threshold in the 1995 English Law CSA and all its varieties — being the amount of gross Exposure beyond which one must start posting variation margin — the Threshold Amount is a level relevant to the calculation of the Cross Default Event of Default - it is the aggregate principle amount of Specified Indebtedness one must have defaulted on to permit one’s counterparty to close you out.

Summary

edit

Threshold Amount

The Threshold Amount is a key feature of the Cross Default Event of Default in the ISDA Master Agreement. It is the level over which accumulated indebtedness defaults comprise an Event of Default. It is usually defined as a cash amount or a percentage of shareholder funds, or both, in which case — schoolboy error hazard alert — be careful to say whether it is the greater or lesser of the two.

Because of the snowball effect that a cross default clause can have on a party’s insolvency it should be big: like, life-threateningly big — because the consequences of triggering a Cross Default are dire, and it may create its own chain reaction beyond the ISDA itself. So expect to see, against a swap dealer, 2-3% of shareholder funds, or sums in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. For end users the number may well be a lot lower (especially for thinly capitalised investment vehicles like funds — like, ten million dollars or so — and, of course, will key off NAV, not shareholder funds.

Premium content

Here the free bit runs out. Subscribers click 👉 here. New readers sign up 👉 here and, for ½ a weekly 🍺 go full ninja about all these juicy topics 👇
  • The JC’s famous Nutshell summary of this clause
  • The cherrypickability of individual bits of indebtedness to get you over the line and why this means you should not include derivatives
edit

See also

edit

References