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Tesla JPM warrants dispute

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bhzmark

Active Member
Jul 21, 2013
4,329
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I've been digging into this and here is some interesting info on the JPM v TSLA dispute:

JPM claims that the basis to make the strike price adjustment that JPM wanted to make, and Tesla disagreed with, is based upon the occurrence of an “Announcement Event.” What is an Announcement Event? From the complaint:

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Was there an announcement of a Tender Offer?

What is a Tender Offer?

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from: https://www.rbccm.com/assets/rbccm/docs/legal/doddfrank/Documents/ISDALibrary/Users Guide to the 2002 ISDA Equity Derivatives Definitions.pdf

It isn't clear to me that the tweets (or the related 8-ks that followed) count as such an announcement, but coming back to that, let's suppose there was an announcement of a Tender Offer, what about the adjustment? How does JPM get to make an adjustment and what sort of adjustment?

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This suggests that the Calculation Agent (JPM) would generally make the adjustment similar to an adjustment that the Options Exchange would have made.

Does anyone know if the relevant Options Exchange made any adjustments at the time of the Funding Secured tweets?


It seems that the other banks with similar rights did NOT make such Calculation Agent Adjustments, and if the relevant Options Exchange also did not make similar options changes, then those facts weaken JPM's arguments that JPM met the "good faith" and "commercially reasonable" standards for their adjustments.

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Here are some other relevant definitions:

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It's interesting that the ISDA definitions refer to the Tender Offer Date (that is the date the shares may have actually been tendered for the $420/share.

While the complaint states that the warrant terms refer to the Announcement Event

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I haven't parsed this through thoroughly but I wonder if the "relevant date of the Announcement Event" is ambiguous between 1) the date of the announcement (date of the tweet or 8-k), or 2) the date of the event that the announcement/tweet announced (i.e., the future closing of the tender offer transaction).

The 2002 ISDA Definition of Modified Calculation Agent Adjustment is clearly referring to the Tender Offer Date, and not merely the announcement of such Tender Offer.

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JPM complaint proudly proclaimed its sole discretion to unilaterally rewrite the terms of the warrants, but its actions in doing so are limited by good faith and reasonability.


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