The defenses can also be an important bargaining tool to get a better price for target shareholders.
The legal action on Thursday gives CME Group an important bargaining chip as the trading commission mulls the firm's application.
City officials, however, continue to defend the offset rules, saying they represent an important bargaining tool in settlement negotiations and protect the city against unjust expenses.
If Tsarnaev and his lawyer want to negotiate something other than a death sentence, his possible coöperation would be an important bargaining chip.
Others, however, believe that the claims — particularly over the forced loan — could be an important bargaining chip in the months ahead as Greece and its creditors are expected to discuss ways to ease its enormous debt burden.
The New York State School Boards Association, which urged Mr. Paterson to veto the union dues legislation, said in a letter to the governor that the bill amounted to "denying school districts an important bargaining tool".
Not 24 hours ago, Mr. Baker's associates here were sending signals - calculated, misleading signals, it turned out - that the Treasury Secretary seemed to be losing ground in important bargaining.
Grammar schools were initially popular with parents who hoped an education would offer their postwar babies what apprenticeships offered an earlier generation: a set of skills that would prove an important bargaining tool, something they could use to negotiate with employers, or to set up on their own.
Russia is moving to become a major supplier of electricity and gas to North Korea at a time when the supply of nonnuclear energy sources available to that impoverished country is emerging as an important bargaining chip in talks intended to defuse North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The Zintan militiamen who hold Saif refuse to hand him over to the judges in Tripoli, ostensibly because his trial was unfair but really because he is an important bargaining chip should a deal between Libya's feuding factions ever be reached.
