ICMA consolidates its secondary market rulebook into a single document, including its buy-in provisions
25 January 2023 ICMA has updated its Secondary Market Rules & Recommendations to consolidate a number of updates over recent years in a single document.
The Secondary Market Rules & Recommendations (“The Rules”) apply to all transactions conducted by members as buyer or seller, in either a principal or agency capacity in international securities.[1]
The Rules cover a range of secondary market practices, including calculating coupon accruals, trading defaulted securities, interest claims for settlement fails, and, perhaps most famously, the process for issuing and executing buy-ins.
The latest version of the Rules includes the recently approved best practice recommendations to support settlement efficiency, which provides guidelines for shaping bond transactions into maximum lot sizes, partialing trades, and using CSD auto-borrow and lending programmes. It also incorporates the 2017 revisions to the Buy-in and Sell-out Rules.
With the Rules automatically applying between ICMA members, it is one of the benefits of membership. Non-member firms can also elect to apply the Rules with their counterparts by incorporation through reference in their general terms of business.
Click here to learn more about the updated ICMA Rulebook
Read more on how ICMA buy-in rules make bond markets more efficient
