Credit Default Swaps (Short Windstream’s Management, Puffery & Stupid F*cking Ideas)


Here
 is a late-to-the-party rant by William D. Cohan in the New York Times about the deleterious effect of credit default swaps and how they caused Windstream Holdings to file for bankruptcy. Here’s Cohan’s prescription to cure CDS ails:

What can be done about these perverse incentives? First, the Securities and Exchange Commission should immediately require greater disclosure of credit-default swap positions held by creditors. It’s the only way for a company, its investors and its employees to have a transparent understanding of a creditor’s motivations.

Ok, sure. What form would this disclosure take? How often would it have to be made? To whom should it be made? Is there a distinction to be made between CDS to hedge a debt position or naked CDS? So many questions.

He continues:

Once those positions are disclosed, the S.E.C. should help companies protect themselves from hostile creditors. The agency could, for example, allow companies to revise the terms of their bond agreements so that creditors with credit-default swaps don’t have the same voting rights as creditors who want a company to succeed. The definition of “failure to pay” and other conditions that might set off a default could also be revised to make it harder for a hedge fund to push a company into technical default. Judges can also play an important role, by taking the creditors’ motivations into account as more of these cases inevitably wind up in the courts.

What. The. F*ck.


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