Opinion: Credit derivatives – don’t disable the concept

Standardising the credit derivatives market could paralyse it, argues Ralf Lierow, director of portfolio management, Europe, equipment and sales financing, Siemens Financial Services

The credit derivatives concept is arguably one of the most brilliant ideas the banking community has developed in a decade. I’ve seen the early days, and I heartily embraced the 1999 International Swaps and Derivatives Association definitions for credit default events, as this catalogue stopped us from losing time discussing what terms such as ‘bankruptcy’ were supposed to mean and enabled us to focus on the economics instead. The time to complete documentation of a trade came down from a