March 3 2020
An update on what the Fed and financial authorities are doing, and which commentators are getting the story right.
March 3 2020
China’s Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) has issued a record number of force majeure certificates, now at 1,615, covering $15.7 billion in transactions. An expansion of the coronavirus or merely fears about the virus, and more force majeure decisions around the world, would mean a new set of demand requirements for collateral markets.
March 3 2020
Calls for the buy-side to take greater responsibility for their collateral activities have been heard for years in the securities finance industry, including in this publication. The argument was that buy-side firms were leaving money and opportunity on the table by allowing dealers to decide what collateral they received in repo or securities lending, or allowing a dealer to decide what collateral to take for OTC derivatives transactions. This status quo was unlikely to hold, and we are now seeing the outcome of new thinking about business models.