ISDA ANNUAL MEETING GETS FIRST LOOK AT
DEFINITIONS FOR CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS

VANCOUVER --Wednesday, March 24, 1999 - The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) issued at its three-day annual meeting today the pre-publication draft of its definitions for credit default swaps.

By establishing standard terms for documentation language used in credit default swaps agreements, the definitions will enable parties to document transactions with a much shorter confirmation. Currently, most transactions are based on a 19-page form of confirmation that ISDA published in early 1998. The definitions incorporate a short-form confirmation and provide credit event terminology that can be used for both sovereign and non-sovereign transactions.

They represent nearly a year's work by an ISDA task force that accelerated its timetable in view of recent events involving credit swaps in Russia and elsewhere.

Robert Pickel, ISDA general counsel, presented the definitions to ISDA members here at a session this morning on the association's documentation and netting activities. Thomas S. Riggs, assistant general counsel at Goldman Sachs, is scheduled to discuss credit derivatives documentation issues Friday morning following a presentation on credit derivatives structures and applications by Chase Manhattan Bank's Paul Varotsis and an analysis of the credit revolution by Shaun N. Rai of CIBC World Markets.

The next steps in ISDA's work on credit derivatives this year will be to publish a user's guide for the definitions and institute a dispute resolution process, said Mr. Pickel. Following that, he said, documentation for other forms of credit derivatives including total return swaps will be considered, but no target dates have been set.