ISDA is the first to sponsor a process to facilitate the negotiation and execution of documentation. The EMU Protocol reflects a major step towards legal and contractual security. After six months of meetings, in-house and private practice finance lawyers from around the world have hammered out a protocol that should prevent tens of thousands of derivatives and swaps contracts having to be individually renegotiated because of the euro. Most of the major dealers have numbers in the estimated tens of thousands of affected contracts, which, as EMU kicks in, will become moot. The protocol has emerged out of the need by many market participants to determine, for example, the price benchmarks to which their contracts will be referenced when the currencies in which they are denominated now are replaced by the euro.
Bankers say the scheme .
Anyone with an ISDA master . The industry has solidly supported this innovative initiative from the start. The ISDA web site is an integral part of the EMU Protocol process. Visitors to the EMU Protocol page can obtain a copy of the EMU Protocol, review a description of ISDA's office procedures for handling adherence letters, access a list of frequently asked questions and answers and download copies of the opinions ISDA has obtained from English and U.S. counsel in support of the Protocol. Most importantly, a list of adhering parties and copies of their adherence letters can be accessed from the EMU Protocol page.