Sensing that there were too many issues and not enough time, Merrill made contingency plans. The hank signed default notices on its repo contracts with Long-Term and rushed them to the Cayman Islands, ready for quick delivery to Long-Term's local agent. Later in the weekend, Merrill managers around the world were briefed on the procedures for liquidation. Their assumption was that if Long-Term went under, other hedge funds would fail, too. What would happen then Merrill could only guess, but it knew that in a panic, access to funding disappears, and no brokerage can long survive without funding. Powerful as it was, Merrill was frightened.