Fulltext Search

Proposed amendments to the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act(CDIC Act) introduced in Bill C-15 enhance the resolution powers of CDIC and are intended to make Canada a Protocol-Eligible Regime under the ISDA 2015 Universal Stay Protocol.

UBS terminated its ISDA Master and FX transactions with Lehman Brothers Inc., was obligated to return about $23 million in collateral, wanted to set-off against that $23 million amounts owing by LBI to UBS affiliates as contemplated by the cross-affiliates set-off provision.

That darn Lehman Brothers bankruptcy sure is raising some interesting insolvency issues for derivatives market participants (and their lawyers of course). It’s interesting (at least for us insolvency nerds) to think about how some of those issues might play out under Canadian insolvency laws. Here are some thoughts on one of the recent cases with my Canadian spin.

On September 18, 2009, a number of amendments to Canada's Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) and Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) came into force. The amendments were passed in 2005 and 2007 but, aside from a few provisions that became effective in July 2008, the amendments sat dormant, awaiting proclamation into force. Pursuant to Order in Council P.C. 2009-1207, almost all of these amendments have now been brought into force. Some of these provisions will be of interest to participants in the securitization market.

In the Spring of 2007, Canada’s Parliament amended several federal insolvency statutes so as to transfer the definition of the class of protected contracts known as “eligible financial contracts” (EFCs) from the federal insolvency statutes themselves to their respective associated regulations. On November 15, the Treasury Board approved the finalized regulations to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Winding-up and Restructuring Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, and the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act.