Russell Dufault (Toronto)

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Location, location, location: Where’s your chief executive office?

In the context of cross-border secured financing transactions involving Canada and the United States, the rules relating to perfection and priority of personal property pledged in favour of a lender or agent are similar. In the U.S., Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code governs while each Canadian jurisdiction has its own personal property security … Continue reading

Harmonizing cash collateral perfection rules between Canada and the U.S.

In secured financing transactions, cash is a popular and useful form of collateral. It is fully liquid, readily available and transferrable, and its value is always known. A debtor holding cash in a deposit account may wish or be required to use it as collateral for obligations such as loans, repurchases and derivative transactions. In … Continue reading

The deemed dividend dilemma: structuring your cross-border credit support

We frequently act as Canadian counsel to lenders and borrowers in cross-border transactions where credit support is provided to a US parent company by one or more of its Canadian subsidiaries. In structuring the deal, a considerable amount of time can be spent determining the extent to which the collateral of the Canadian subsidiaries should … Continue reading

How are market participants dealing with the retirement of Libor?

Earlier this year I wrote about the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) announcement in July of its plan to phase-out the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the interest rate benchmark used to set payments on more than $350 trillion in financial contracts such interest-rate derivatives, corporate bonds, mortgage loans and more. The FCA’s intention is to … Continue reading

Libor retirement and implications for contracts tied to it

The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the interest rate benchmark used to calculate interest rates on short-term loans by many large banks, will be phased out after 2021 according to its regulator. The London based Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently announced that due to growing concerns regarding the long term sustainability of the benchmark, which … Continue reading
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