Whenever the underlying stock of a U.S. securities option is halted, OCC generally removes the expiring options associated with that stock from their Exercise by Exception procedure. Note that this procedure serves to automatically exercise options that are in-the-money by at least $0.01 at expiration, and is intended as an operational convenience to clearing members and their clients. This procedure, however, cannot be used by OCC when the stock has halted and the price and economics of the decision remains uncertain.
As a result, clients are required to provide affirmative instructions of their intent to exercise such contracts and those instructions will be honored as long as there are no OCC or regulatory restrictions upon exercise and as long as the client is projected to remain margin compliant after giving effect to the exercise and delivery of the underlying.