Restructuring Credit Event After Ardagh – CDS Reforms For High-yield Credits

Introduction

The 2025 restructuring of the Ardagh Group S.A. (Ardagh or the company) capital structure unleashed one of the most controversial—and ultimately consequential—“Restructuring” credit event determination processes since the adoption of the 2014 ISDA Credit Derivative Definitions¹ governing standard credit default swaps (CDS). Arising from a novel set of facts that unfurled across much of the latter half of 2025, this saga demonstrated that a European CDS Restructuring credit event can occur much earlier than market participants had previously anticipated or experienced, ultimately causing some participants to reprice the product to account for this previously discounted risk. Moreover, the outcome effectively opens the door to a form of asset-package delivery for standard European corporate CDS (European CDS) that the 2014 Definitions had deliberately declined to adopt for a variety of reasons, including to prevent CDS abuse.