The Oil Drum

PeeWee,

For a history of -credit- derivatives, and some good insight as well, read:

The dream machine: invention of credit derivatives

After the meeting ended, the bankers flew back from Florida and started hunting for ways to put these ideas into practice. One was Robert Reoch, a young British banker who had recently joined JPMorgan’s London derivatives desk, which was tucked in a former boys’ school on Victoria Embankment. At that time, this derivatives team was very busy in Europe doing its “usual” business of trading currency and interest rate “swaps”. But at the time, JPMorgan also had another booming business in London - trading government bonds. And in the months after Boca Raton, Reoch and his colleagues started to work on the idea of a credit derivative.

No one on the team knew how to price this type of contract, let alone create the paperwork needed to keep the lawyers happy. But Reoch found an investor willing to buy such a deal, and one day he quietly sold a contract that placed bets on whether three European bonds would default. “It was the first time we had done a transaction like that,” Reoch proudly recalls.

What was it they did? The trade was what is known as a “first to default” swap. At that time JPMorgan was heavily involved in trading European government bonds and bond derivatives that left it exposed to losses if any bonds suddenly went into default (not an irrational fear in the pre-euro mid-1990s). However, the bank created a contract which effectively insured itself against such a default for a basket of bonds (say, that of Sweden, Italy and Belgium). It stipulated that if any of these bonds went into default, an investor would pay JPMorgan compensation. If that default never occurred, the investor would make money because they were receiving a fee to take this risk; but if any bonds defaulted, JPMorgan was covered.

Thus as long as a price could be found that kept everyone happy, it was a win-win deal: JPMorgan reduced its risk, and the investors could earn nice returns. It took another three months for the team to sort out the paperwork for this experiment. And it didn’t at first make waves in the financial markets. At that time, other banks were also experimenting in this way - and groups such as Bankers Trust and Credit Suisse were considered more innovative and aggressive in this area than JPMorgan. Yet, as 1994 turned into 1995, JPMorgan moved out in front.

They made it as incomprehensible as possible, on purpose.