Project Colin: why Goldman-led margin hub fell apart
The world’s big dealers quietly started work on a new swaps market utility last year, dubbed Project Colin. The aim was to control the vast collateral flows arising from incoming bilateral margining rules, but the consortium has since fallen apart, and a coalition of middleware and back-office firms have stepped into the breach
Nothing imbues glamour like a top-secret project with a mysterious codename, so when collateral managers at the big swap dealers started work on a new margining utility last year, it was a chance to cloak themselves, for a while, in a little intrigue.
They called it Project Colin.
It was a missed opportunity, because the sensitivity around the project is real, and the stakes are high. The aim of
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