ISDA_®
Safe, Efficient Markets

The paper is intended to give the reader an insight into the different offsetting requirements under IFRS and U.S. GAAP and their impact on the new Basel III Leverage Ratio.

The paper analyzes existing and potential opportunities for further standardization in the OTC commodity derivatives markets in order to drive improvements in operational efficiency, reduce operational risk, and increase netting and clearing for appropriate products. It also provides a summary of OTC commodity derivatives markets’ trade processing lifecycle events and an overview of the current industry state of processing.

Portfolio Compression is a risk reduction practice is conducted in the interest rate swaps (IRS) market. This paper includes: an overview of the compression process, metrics on the significant progress achieved to date, the challenges that need to be met to increase compression by a significant amount, the approaches of four major dealers to maximize benefits and an estimate of what is possible in terms of potential notional that might be compressed.

Analysis of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market based on statistics as of June 30, 2011.

The majority of sovereigns do not post collateral to support their use of over-the-counter (“OTC”) derivatives1. As a result, dealers regularly have credit exposure arising out of these contracts which is often hedged with the sovereign Credit Default Swaps (“CDS”), and interest rate and foreign exchange swaps and options. This process has been of particular concern in Europe because of the possible ban on the use of sovereign CDS. To assist in highlighting this and other concerns arising out of the practice not to collateralize OTC derivatives, two associations2 (“the Surveying Associations” or ”SAs”) conducted a survey of dealers earlier this year, regarding their OTC derivatives exposure to European Sovereigns (“ES”).

The counterparty credit risk exposure of 12 US bank holding companies and international banking companies to monoline insurers has led to some $54 billion in write-downs by the banks since 2007. ISDA conducted this study as part of its examination into the losses incurred in the US banking system due to counterparty defaults on OTC derivatives. An earlier paper on the subject (below, dated August 5, 2011), showed such losses for US banks amounted to only $2.7 billion from 2007 through the first quarter of 2011. After further investigation, it became apparent that the transactions involving subprime mortgage risk taken in synthetic form (via derivatives) were booked in firms outside the US banking system.

This short paper examines the extent of counterparty credit losses and the efficacy of credit mitigation techniques in the U.S. banking system with respect to OTC derivatives. ISDA drew upon data from the Office of the Controller of the Currency Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities First Quarter 2011 (the OCC Report) and SEC reports filed by the parents of two non-bank entities active in structuring CDOs of sub-prime mortgages where significant losses are known to have occurred due to monoline insurance company exposure.

Analysis of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market based on year-end statistics published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and LCH.Clearnet’s SwapClear.

This paper discusses important issues associated with mandating the use of swap execution facilities (SEFs) for executing certain OTC derivatives products. It asserts that such mandates should be structured in a way that preserves the OTC derivatives market's strengths while addressing its weaknesses, presents a set of desirable SEF characteristics to meet this objective and identifies relatively modest infrastructure and transparency benefits that SEFs might bring. The paper also analyzes the proposed rules of the CFTC and the SEC required by the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA).

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