Legal Steering

The Legal Steering Group (LSG) looks more broadly at the implications of political, regulatory and technological change on our market structure, and how those changes may require alterations to our core Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (GMSLA).

The LSG Opinions Subgroup reviews the existing opinions gathering services offered by ISLA to ISLA members, including:

• Review of the existing structure for title transfer opinions
• Review of jurisdictions and counterpart types
• Discuss strategy for incorporating amendments recommend by ISLA netting opinions
• Investigate the requirement for further jurisdictional opinions to support pledge activity
• Timeline for the review of FCAR opinions and other bespoke opinions obtained by ISLA

The LSG Documentation Subgroup reviews and provides guidance to ISLA and the ISLA Board on the contractual enhancements or supplements that can be made to industry standard documentation to reflect and support the current securities lending landscape, including:

• Review of contractual arrangements to cover digital assets/currency
• Development of standard form language/confirmations for trade types such as evergreen, extendable and uncollateralised trades
• Development of standard form ‘jurisdiction annex’ to incorporate amendments recommended by ISLA netting opinions
• Development of an online document negotiation platform to support SL documentation/annexes

The Digital Assets Legal Working Group is run by ISLA & ICMA jointly with the chairs as: Tina Baker, ISLA and Deena Seoudy, ICMA.

Frequency: Monthly (Subgroup meetings are held as required)
Requirement: Member firms can apply to join the group; however, you must be a legal representative of your firm. Regular attendance and active participation in relevant meetings are a prerequisite (ISLA reserves the right to modify attendance based on the current composition).

Any latest working group minutes can be found below, further updates can be found in Legal Services.

By clicking here you can see the current list of upcoming meetings. Don’t see a meeting currently planned? Check back – we update our list of upcoming meetings every week.