If the iTunes tie-up generates significant cash advances or sales, it could delay breaches in the company's loan covenants.

WSJ: Apple Gets Rights to Sell Digital Beatles Music

Starting in March, UAL's loan covenants require it to meet a schedule of reductions in operating losses and to break even by October.

FORBES: Deathwatch

Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) announced a pact with Linux software distributor Xandros Monday that will the offer tiny company's customers so-called "patent covenants, " protecting them from the threat of litigation from Microsoft.

FORBES: Microsoft's Protection Racket?

Egged on by Carlsberg's managers, lawyers have been poring over covenants seeking ways around the ownership requirement.

ECONOMIST: Carlsberg

The deal was swaddled in covenants covering, among other things, the European Union's farm-trade policies and the commercial viability of selling pre-washed lettuce.

ECONOMIST: Leveraged debt

Global's withering finances could put it in violation of bank covenants.

FORBES: Global Crashing

In many instances banks have loan covenants whereby the teams have to repay their loans immediately if there's a strike or a lockout.

FORBES: Too Much to Lose

All gift covenants will be honoured, but future financing remains uncertain for women's programmes and student grants that are now supported by Radcliffe.

ECONOMIST: College life

Moody's, another rating agency, says it was less worried by the absence of covenants last year than by the more aggressive use of borrowed money (in particular, bank debt) in private-equity deals.

ECONOMIST: What isn't known about bad debts