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Contingencies | 9 Months Ended
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Aug. 31, 2011
Contingencies | NOTE 3 – Contingencies Litigation In the normal course of our business, various claims and lawsuits have been filed or are pending against us. Most of these claims and lawsuits are covered by insurance and, accordingly, the maximum amount of our liability, net of any insurance recoverables, is typically limited to our self-insurance retention levels. However, management believes the ultimate outcome of these claims and lawsuits that are not covered by insurance will not have a material adverse impact on our consolidated financial statements. Contingent Obligations – Lease Out and Lease Back Type (“LILO”) Transactions In April 2011, Carnival Corporation and certain participants voluntarily unwound $87 million of one of its LILO contingent liability transactions. Accordingly, at August 31, 2011 Carnival Corporation had estimated contingent obligations totaling $421 million, excluding termination payments as discussed below, to participants in LILO transactions for two of its ships. At the inception of these leases, the aggregate of the net present value of these obligations was paid by Carnival Corporation to a group of major financial institutions, who agreed to act as payment undertakers and directly pay these obligations. As a result, these contingent obligations are considered extinguished, and neither the funds nor the contingent obligations have been included in our accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheets. In the event that Carnival Corporation were to default on its contingent obligations and assuming performance by all other participants, we estimate that we would, as of August 31, 2011, be responsible for a termination payment of $61 million. In 2017, we have the right to exercise options that would terminate these two LILO transactions at no cost to us. In certain cases, if the credit ratings of the financial institutions who are directly paying the contingent obligations fall below AA-, then Carnival Corporation will be required to replace these financial institutions with other financial institutions whose credit ratings are at least AA or meet other specified credit requirements. In such circumstances we would incur additional costs, although we estimate that they would be immaterial to our consolidated financial statements. For the two financial institution payment undertakers subject to this AA- credit rating threshold, one has a credit rating of AAA and the other has a credit rating of AA. If Carnival Corporation’s credit rating, which is BBB+, falls below BBB, it will be required to provide a standby letter of credit for $46 million, or, alternatively, provide mortgages for this aggregate amount on these two ships. Contingent Obligations – Indemnifications Some of the debt agreements that we enter into include indemnification provisions that obligate us to make payments to the counterparty if certain events occur. These contingencies generally relate to changes in taxes and changes in laws that increase lender capital costs and other similar costs. The indemnification clauses are often standard contractual terms and were entered into in the normal course of business. There are no stated or notional amounts included in the indemnification clauses, and we are not able to estimate the maximum potential amount of future payments, if any, under these indemnification clauses. We have not been required to make any material payments under such indemnification clauses in the past and, under current circumstances, we do not believe a request for material future indemnification payments is probable.

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