1912年，裁缝兼发明家弗朗茨·赖歇尔特登上埃菲尔铁塔一层进行展示。他设计了一套兼作降落伞的服装。在假人身上测试结果喜忧参半后，他决定进行载人测试——结果惨烈坠亡。如今，信用违约互换（CDS）的持有者也同样发现自己悬在半空，带着一顶未经测试的降落伞。CDS是一种在借款人破产时支付赔付的保险形式。
IN 1912 FRANZ REICHELT, a tailor and inventor, ascended to the first level of the Eiffel Tower to offer a demonstration. He had designed a suit which could double as a parachute. After mixed results with mannequins, he decided it was time for a manned test—and fell to a grisly end. Today owners of credit-default swaps (CDSs), a form of insurance designed to pay out when borrowers go bust, likewise find themselves in mid-air with an untested parachute.CDSs can be used to hedge exposure to debt, or to speculate.
CDS可用于对冲债务敞口，也可用于投机。但无论哪种用途，它们都是好方法吗？这类工具在2007-09年全球金融危机中声名狼藉，随后在欧元区债务危机中折翼。2011年，希腊政府对其债务的初步重组未能触发CDS赔付。尽管这些合约最终在2012年被激活，但到那时许多投资者已失去信心。2014年他们又遭受更多损失，当时葡萄牙央行将濒临倒闭的圣灵银行一分为二，而国际掉期与衍生工具协会（ISDA）裁定其CDS适用于较强的分拆实体。一些持有旧银行债券的投资者面临巨额损失——以及赖歇尔特式的保护。
But are they a good way to do either? The instruments gained notoriety in the global financial crisis of 2007-09, then got their wings clipped during the euro-zone debt crisis. In 2011 the Greek government’s initial restructuring of its debt failed to trigger CDS payouts. Although the contracts were eventually activated in 2012, by then many investors had lost faith. They lost more in 2014, after Portugal’s central bank split the failing Banco Espirito Santo in two and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) judged its CDSs to apply to the stronger offshoot. Some investors who held the old bank’s bonds faced huge losses—and Reichelt-like protection.
尽管遭遇这些挫折，CDS又重新流行起来。对法国公共债务的担忧已推动相关五年期CDS成本升至14年来最高水平。在美国，为甲骨文未来五年内违约投保的成本在过去12个月里翻了两番。甲骨文是一家全力投入人工智能数据中心的云计算巨头。如果世界上不断堆积的债务轰然崩塌，许多CDS投资者可以预期一次硬着陆。
Despite these setbacks, the CDS is back in vogue. Concern over France’s public debt has driven the cost of related five-year CDSs to its highest in 14 years. In America the cost of insuring against a default in the next five years by Oracle, a cloud-computing giant going all-in on artificial-intelligence data centres, has quadrupled in the past 12 months. If the world’s mounting pile of debt comes crashing down, many CDS investors can expect a hard landing.
在某些方面，CDS已变得不那么不可靠。例如，2014年对标准合约条款的修改明确规定，政府债务重新计价为欧元以外货币将算作违约，而此前这一点并不明确。
In some ways CDSs have been made less flaky. For example, changes to the terms of standard contracts in 2014 made it clear the redenomination of government debt into currencies other than the euro would count as a default, which was not explicit before.
债券置换——即强行将旧债务换成对借款人更有利的新债务——如今也被算作可触发信用违约互换（CDS）的违约事件。然而，尽管一些旧的漏洞已被补上，新的裂痕又出现了。自12年前国际掉期与衍生工具协会（ISDA）规则上一次重大更新以来，企业违约已变得像紧身牛仔裤一样不再流行，这要归功于面临破产的企业——尤其是在美国——所进行的大量法律创新。
Bond exchanges, where an old liability is forcibly swapped for a new one more favourable to the borrower, also now count as a CDS-triggering default. But although some of the old holes have been patched up, new tears have appeared. Since the last big update to ISDA’s rules 12 years ago, corporate defaults have become as unfashionable as skinny jeans, thanks to furious legal innovation by firms facing bankruptcy, especially in America.
许多企业如今选择“负债管理操作”（LME），即对其债务进行创造性的重组，以避免旷日持久的法庭争斗。自2024年以来，美国的LME数量已超过常规违约。电信公司Altice France于2024年宣布进行激进的LME重组后，投资者等了数月才等到CDS赔付。欧洲包装制造商Ardagh Group的债务CDS持有者在该公司同年7月进行LME后，经历了更加坎坷的遭遇。
Many now opt for liability-management exercises (LMEs), creative restructurings of their debts that avoid lengthy court battles. Since 2024 LMEs in America have outnumbered conventional defaults. Investors waited months for a CDS payout after Altice France, a telecoms firm, announced an aggressive LME restructuring in 2024. Holders of CDSs covering the debt of Ardagh Group, a European packaging manufacturer, faced an even rockier ride after its LME in July the same year.
Ardagh的CDS价格起初下跌，因为当时看来它们不会被触发。赔付最终到位，但在此之前投资者已再次开始质疑这类互换的价值。至少Altice和Ardagh都位于欧洲，在欧洲，重组被视为一种信用事件，可以（原则上）触发CDS。北美则不然，而几乎所有正遭受信贷市场风暴冲击的AI公司都在北美。制造芯片、建设数据中心以及以其他方式参与快速发展的AI经济的企业，正在寻求复杂的融资安排。
Prices of Ardagh CDSs fell at first, when it appeared that they would not be triggered. The payouts eventually landed, but not before investors again began to question the swaps’ merit. At least Altice and Ardagh are based in Europe, where restructuring is considered a credit event that can (in principle) trigger a CDS. Not so in North America, home to almost all of the AI companies being buffeted by the credit-market storm. The businesses making chips, building data centres and otherwise involved in the fast-moving AI economy are reaching for complicated financing arrangements.
它们的贷款以数据中心租约和“剩余履约义务”（客户支付算力费用的承诺）等作为担保。供应商在向客户放贷，有时自己还背负着大量借款。这种复杂性正是酿成棘手且不确定的重组的温床。支持者认为，CDS在发生违约时仍能提供保护。
Their loans are backed by things like data-centre leases and “remaining performance obligations” (customers’ promises to pay them for computing capacity). Suppliers are lending money to their customers, sometimes while borrowing loads themselves. Such complexity is a recipe for a nasty and uncertain restructuring. Defenders argue that CDSs still provide protection in the event of a default.
最常购买此类产品的成熟投资者，往往已做好打持久法律战的准备，并愿意承受市场波动。这让CDS听起来像是仿照橡树资本或埃利奥特投资管理公司模式、对不良债务进行资源密集型押注。然而，这并非它们最初的设计初衷。CDS的原始目的是通过在不付款情况下提供可预测的赔付，使对冲债务敞口变得更容易。当赔付不再可预测——并且要求投资者变身为霍华德·马克斯或保罗·辛格（两人分别是橡树资本和埃利奥特的强硬派创始人）——CDS看起来就和赖歇尔特的那对翅膀一样破败不堪了。
The sophisticated investors who most commonly buy such products are often prepared for protracted legal battles and willing to weather the volatility. This makes CDSs sound like resource-intensive bets on distressed debt in the mould of Oaktree Capital or Elliott Investment. Yet that is not how they were envisaged. Their original purpose was to make it easier to hedge exposure to debt by offering a predictable payout in the event of non-payment. When the payout is no longer predictable—and requires investors to turn into Howard Marks or Paul Singer, the hard-charging founders of Oaktree and Elliott, respectively—CDSs look as threadbare as Reichelt’s wings.