Docs shock: how dealers are tackling the VM deadline

Efforts to move the market onto collateral agreements that comply with new variation margining rules are not going as planned, leading to fears some will be unable to trade from March 1

In a dark New York bar on the evening of November 9 – 24 hours after Donald Trump was elected US president – a US banker was nursing his beer. The mood was grim. "I believe we're witnessing the start of a slow-motion train crash," he said.

A lot of wounded voters were looking for solace in the city's bars that evening, but in that setting, the banker was alone. Unlike his fellow drinkers, ranters, and head-shaking doubters, he was not making a political point; he was worrying about the