DTCC VALUES CDS CONTRACTS NOW IN ITS WAREHOUSE AT $5.7 TRILLION

Posted August 3, 2009

“We are pleased to be able to verify and now report on CDS data based on what we’ve seen from firms’ initial submission of contracts into our global registry to meet their July 17 deadline,” says Stewart Macbeth, Managing Director and General Manager of the Trade Information Warehouse, DTCC. “There was a small percentage of CDS trades which were not previously held in the Warehouse because of the tailored nature of the contracts. In registering these CDS trade positions, the goal of trying to ensure that risk could be seen from a central vantage point at a central repository has now been achieved for the CDS market.”

These contract submissions represent more customized contracts that are not confirmable on an electronic platform such as the automated service provided by DTCC Deriv/SERV. Data registration was received using 30 different currencies from a customer base that spans 35 countries. The submission of these customized trades are for repository and reporting purposes only and do not confer a legal binding agreement in the Warehouse as do electronically confirmed trades that are maintained in the global repository. As of July 24, there were about 2.2 million electronically confirmed contracts with a gross notional value of about $26.5 trillion registered in the Warehouse’s repository. These new submission represents less than 10 percent of the total contracts and 17 percent of the total gross notional value of contracts registered in the repository.