The runaway success of credit derivatives

The growth of the credit derivatives market over the past five years has surpassed even the most optimistic expectations, and an integral part of that expansion has been the development of credit default swaps

When Credit magazine celebrated the fifth anniversary of its launch in February 2005, it asked a number of participants in the credit market to nominate the single most influential development in the credit universe during the period of exhaustive growth between 2000 and 2005. Time and again, their response was to point to the explosive growth in the credit derivatives space in general, and to the expansion in the market for credit default swaps (CDS) in particular. That powerful expansion has