Argentina vs Holdouts Could Set Precedent for Future Debt Crises

• by Marcela Valente (buenos aires)
• Wednesday, March 27, 2013
• Inter Press Service

Since Argentina defaulted on nearly 100 billion dollars in debt in late 2001, close to 93 percent of the bonds have been restructured at a deep discount, with lower interest rates and at longer terms.

But a group of hedge funds that refused to participate in the 2005 and 2010 restructurings sued for full payment of 1.3 billion dollars in Argentine bonds in federal court in New York.

On Tuesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York declined to grant a full-court rehearing of a decision by a three-judge panel that went against Argentina in October, ruling that this country had to deal with all of its debt holders equally.

The suit not only threatens to return Argentina's debt restructuring process to square one. Experts warn that it could have an impact on the decision-making capacity of other countries that run into severe financial difficulties at times of global crisis.

The government of centre-left President Cristina Fernández has until Friday Mar. 29 to present a solution for making the payments to the hedge funds.

The government says it will offer the holdouts the same conditions as the ones accepted by the rest of the creditors in the 2010 restructuring: discounts, lower interest and longer terms.

But that would involve a new debt swap, which would require congressional approval because a law passed after 2010 banned the reopening of debt restructuring.

Argentina is now financially stable and makes its debt payments on time, despite the fact that it lost access to global credit markets after the December 2001 default, which was announced in the context of an economic and social meltdown.

According to the latest report by the Economy Ministry, as of mid-2012 Argentina holds 183 billion dollars in debt, equivalent to 41.5 percent of GDP, one of the lowest proportions in Latin America. The report did not include the defaulted bonds.

Up to now, the Fernández administration had refused to settle with the hedge funds, referring to them as "vulture funds" – opportunistic investors who purchase the debt of heavily indebted countries cheap and then sue for full repayment.

The lawsuit in New York is led by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer's Elliott Management. The hedge funds acquired the Argentine bonds at 20 to 30 percent of their nominal value.

If the courts finally come down on the side of the hedge funds, Argentine assets could be embargoed internationally.

Some experts in Argentina believe the U.S. court will accept the Fernández administration's proposal, in order to put an end to the dispute and to defend the credibility of global payment systems.

But others are more sceptical.

Fernando Porta, an economist with Centro Redes, a research institute in Buenos Aires, told IPS that if the courts in New York refused to recognise Argentina's restructuring proposal, "a huge level of uncertainty would be introduced in the system."

"The potential negative impacts would go beyond Argentina and would throw into question the operation of the international debt restructuring system when countries are having trouble meeting their payments," he said.

Porta said that with respect to debt restructuring, there are no multilateral agreements setting rules, but merely precedents that give the process predictability.

For that reason, he believes Argentina's proposal "will be accepted in the end," although several other obstacles may have to be overcome first.

But analyst Fausto Spotorno with the Orlando Ferreres y Asociados consultancy was less optimistic. "I don't think this proposal will be accepted by the holdouts," he said.

In Spotorno's view, the New York appeals court is unlikely to accept Argentina's offer if it does not have unanimous support among the creditors. "The holdouts have the first-instance ruling in their favour, which means they aren't going to accept a proposal with discounts and longer terms now," he said.

The analyst said it was naive to believe that the court would take into account the impact that its decision could have on future cases of debt restructuring. "New bond issues contain clauses that prevent this problem," he noted.

He was referring to collective action clauses (CACs), first proposed by Mexico in 2003, which since then have been included in bond issues to facilitate eventual restructuring.

CACs allow a majority of bondholders to agree to a legally binding debt restructuring. By forcing potential holdouts to accept the restructuring if a large majority of other creditors do so, it provides protection against vulture funds.

The clauses were used controversially by Greece in 2010, when it introduced them retroactively to restructure the country's debt and avoid default, according to "Un ensayo sobre las Cláusulas de Acción Colectiva", a paper on collective action clauses published in Mexico.

The study, published this year by Mexican economists Alejandro Castañeda and Pablo Newman in the Gaceta de Economía journal, says the new mechanism became widely used as a result of the threat posed by opportunistic creditors in the cases of Argentina and Peru.

The European Union has required the inclusion of CACs in all new eurozone bond issues since January.

But they had already been incorporated by most countries in Latin America and other regions, with varying minimum percentages of support required from bondholders.

In their report, the Mexican academics point out that the bonds issued by Argentina in its debt swaps contain CACs, but older rules requiring unanimous acceptance of new conditions apply to the bonds held by the holdouts.

Under the older rules, if one single bondholder rejects the proposed new financial terms, the process can be blocked by litigation which, if successful, can also benefit the rest of the bondholders - and seriously affect the state issuing the bonds.

But there are still countries with bonds issued in the 1990s that would be affected by a resolution against Argentina.

© Inter Press Service (2013) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement