I’m sure that at this time, and perhaps even at this conference, his voice would have been heard and he’d have been offering us imaginative insights into the coronavirus crisis. Michal, we miss you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. I hope you find the conference interesting and inspiring. 7/7  BIS central bankers' speeches
Although the notional total value of these contracts, now approaching $ trillion, is not a particularly useful measure of the underlying economic exposure at stake, the size of gross exposures and the extraordinarily large number of contracts suggest the scale of the unwinding challenge the market would confront in the event of the exit of a major counterparty. The process of closing out those positions and replacing them could add stress to markets and possibly intensify the direct damage caused by exposure to the exiting institution. Credit derivatives, where the gaps in the infrastructure and risk management systems are most conspicuous, are less than 10 percent, and perhaps less than 5 percent, of the total OTC derivatives universe, but are growing much more rapidly. Large notional values are written on a much smaller base of underlying debt issuance. The same names show up in multiple types of positions-singles-name, index and structured products such as CDOs. These create the potential for squeezes in cash markets and greater volatility across instruments in the event of a default, magnifying the risk of adverse market dynamics. 2  •  The net credit exposures in OTC derivatives, after accounting for collateral, are a small fraction of the gross notional values. The ten largest U.S. bank holding companies, for example, report about $ billion of potential credit exposure from their entire derivatives positions, the total gross notional values of which are about $ trillion.