Debt Coverage:
Buenos Aires Herald: “Argentina to appeal whole bond ruling today”
MercoPress: “Crucial week for Argentina’s bonds’ dispute with ‘technical default’ fears looming”
Buenos Aires Herald: “‘We won’t tolerate NML’s blackmailing,’ Argentina’s Ambassador to US”
Seeking Alpha: “Why We Might Soon See Another Argentine Default”
Business Insider: “How Argentina Got To Be Such An Economic Basket Case”
Reuters: “RPT-Argentina playing last cards in court battle with bondholders”
La Rouche PAC: “Who’s preying on Argentina? The Queen’s Own Vultures”
La Rouche PAC: “Argentina’s President: Defense of National Sovereignty Means Ending Debt Slavery”
Buenos Aires Herald: “Argentine case adds to sovereign debt doubts”
Business Insider: “Argentina’s President Now Has Two Options”
Business Insider: “Judge Orders Argentina to Pay Every Cent it Owes To Hedge Funds”
Financial Times: “Argentina shows the integrity of default”
The Guardian: “How could Greece and Argentina—the new ‘debt colonies’ –be set free?”
Business Insider: “Argentina Nearing Technical Default”
International Financing Review: “Confusion over Argentina CDS trigger”
Reuters: “Elliot vs Argentina is a domestic Argentine issue”
Global Post: “Vulture funds rip Argentina”
The Wall Street Journal: “Cost to Insure Argentina Bonds Spikes, Highest Since 2009”
Financial Times: “Argentina’s Fernandez rages at NY ruling”
Fox News Latino: “Argentina is Ordered by New York Judge to Pay Debts in Full”
Reuters: “Argentina bondholders fear U.S. court ruling could trigger default”
The Independent: “The vulture capitalist who devoured Peru—and now threatens Argentina”
Financial Times: “Ecuador: too small of a fish to fry for vulture funds”
The Economist: “The noose tightens”
Prime Economics: “Don’t (cry for me) pay up now, Argentina!”
Buenos Aires Herald
Monday, November 26, 2012
Judge Griesa’s decision to be appealed by government
Argentina will go to an appeals court in New York today to challenge the ruling of US Judge Thomas Griesa, who last week issued a decision that raised the spectre of a technical default. A decade after committing the biggest sovereign default in history, Argentina faces another crisis after a US court ordered it to pay US$1.3 billion by December 15 to holders of defaulted bonds.
Argentina will go to an appeals court in New York today to challenge the ruling of US Judge Thomas Griesa, who last week issued a decision that raised the spectre of a technical default. A decade after committing the biggest sovereign default in history, Argentina faces another crisis after a US court ordered it to pay US$1.3 billion by December 15 to holders of defaulted bonds.
Last Wednesday, US District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered Argentina to pay the holdouts. Rather than trying to chip away at the edges of Griesa’s order, Argentina’s lawyers plan to challenge the whole opinion today in the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
About 93 percent of Argentine bondholders agreed in 2005 and 2010 to swap defaulted debt from the 2002 default for new paper at a steep discount.
MercoPress
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Argentine strategy will be to alert the court and the financial world of the dangers involved in the decision for the debt restructuring processes which have currently become quite common because of the critical moments many countries are going through with exceptionally high debt/GDP ratios.
The appeal will argue that the implementation of Judge Griesa decision puts at risk future sovereign debt restructuring processes globally and could have severe consequences for the functioning of the New York financial markets.
Buenos Aires Herald
Monday, November 26, 2012
Argentina’s Ambassador to the United States, Jorge Argüello, assured today that “Argentina will not pay the price for the financial irrationality of the North", and under no circumstances "will tolerate the vulture funds’ blackmailing.”
The diplomat also stated that “Argentina has been following the rules of the international financial system. We’ve been paying with no delays to all our creditors of the 2001 defaulted debt.”
We will not tolerate the blackmails of NML Capital “vulture” fund, which rejected a debt restructure twice.”
Seeking Alpha
Monday, November 26, 2012
By Felix Salmon
Judge Thomas Griesa, of the Southern District court in Manhattan, is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more. Yesterday he unleashed three different orders and declarations on Argentina, all of which might as well have been dictated to him by Elliott Associates, the plaintiff suing Argentina for some $1.3 billion.
You’ll remember that last month, the Second Circuit, upholding one of Griesa’s orders, asked Griesa to clarify a couple of matters before the order could be fully enforced. In April, after Griesa’s orders first came out, I said that they were “notable for their lack of legal reasoning”, and added that “Griesa is throwing his hands in the air, here, and basically punting the whole issue up to the appeals court.”
Business Insider
Monday, November 26, 2012
By Linette Lopez
Argentina's in a tight spot.
Last month, the entire world started paying attention to the country's economy when hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer seized an Argentine naval vessel, the ARA Libertad, as collateral for its debts — debts that the country's government is ideologically opposed to paying.
For a rich country with a desire for access to international credit markets, this is obviously not a good look. Add to that problems with inflation, civil unrest, and an unpopular president, and you've got quite a mess on your hands.
Reuters
Monday, November 26, 2012
By Helen Popper and Daniel Bases
BUENOS AIRES/NEW YORK, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Argentina will make a last-ditch attempt this week to stall a U.S. court ruling that has shaken the nation's strategy to put a 2002 debt crisis behind it and fueled fears of a fresh default.
A decade since it staged the biggest sovereign default in history, Argentina faces a stark choice between depositing $1.3 billion before Dec. 15 to pay "holdout" creditors who rejected two debt restructurings, or jeopardizing payments to all its bondholders.
La Rouche PAC
Sunday, November 25, 2012
An incisive article in the Nov. 22 issue of Britain's Independent zeroes in on the fact that vulture funds such as Elliott Associates, which is preying on Argentina and other developing nations, are conveniently located in such British overseas territories as the Cayman Islands, which "flies the Union Jack, sings 'God Save the Queen, and its authorities report directly to our Foreign Office." The Caymans is home to 9,253 such predatory funds, the New York Times reported earlier this year.
Elliott, owned by multibillionaire Paul Singer and which was behind the seizure in Ghana of Argentina's Navy ship Libertad on Oct. 2, is a looter, pure and simple, the British daily notes. Like others of its ilk, "it feeds off toddling, recovering nations from murky secrecy jurisdictions." It buys up depressed debt of nations in crisis "in hope of an eventual refleshed carcass and lacerating recourse via any international jurisdiction that would stand for it." In Argentina's case, that jurisdiction was the British Empire outpost of Ghana.
La Rouche PAC
Sunday, November 25, 2012
On Nov. 21, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner implicitly addressed the imperial offensive waged against her government by the City of London and its allied vulture funds, when she spoke on National Sovereignty Day, commemorating the Nov. 20, 1845 battle of Vuelta de Obligado, when patriotic forces deployed by President Juan Manuel de Rosas held back an invading Anglo-French naval fleet that was proceeding up the Parana River to break up the Argentine Confederation and impose free trade.
Pointedly, Fernandez referenced the case of Luis Maria Drago, the Argentine Foreign Minister who in December of 1902 sent his famous diplomatic note to Washington to denounce Britain, Germany and Italy for sending their gunboats to blockade Venezuela in order to collect their debts which, he pointed out, was a violation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Then-President and British agent Teddy Roosevelt backed the imperialist debt-collectors, but Drago's intervention, as Fernandez explained, went down in history as Argentina's defense of Monroe Doctrine.
Buenos Aires Herald
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Sujata Rao
In an era where sovereign debt distress has become commonplace, this week’s ruling on Argentina’s protracted bond restructuring just made the outlook more complicated for creditors and debtors alike.
The ruling by US Federal Judge Thomas Griesa has raised the spectre of a technical default next month by Argentina, which has been ordered to immediately make full payment to funds that had shunned its past debt restructuring rounds.
The ramifications of the case will ripple far beyond Buenos Aires and New York.
The ruling is of course a blow for Argentina which terms these holdout funds “vultures” and has vowed not to pay them a penny.
Business Insider
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Linette Lopez
It's looking more and more like Argentina will not be able to find a way to avoid paying bond holders through the American judiciary system.
So now it has two options — to pay "vulture funds" like Paul Singer's Elliot Management $1.3 billion in sovereign debt next month, or not to pay.
Business Insider
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Linette Lopez
Judge Thomas Griesa didn't give Argentina an inch.
In a ruling earlier this week, the New York Judge ordered Argentina to pay out every cent it owes Paul Singer's hedge fund Elliot Management, and other bond holders suing for $1.3 billion dollars in sovereign debt.
Financial Times
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Mario Blejer
Once again, Argentina finds itself at the centre of a dispute that could have far-reaching implications for sovereign debt markets, with last week’s US court decision ordering it to repay hedge fund investors who had refused an earlier debt writedown.
The country has long been criticised for the unilateral nature of its decision to default on sovereign debt in 2002 – and for the manner in which it announced the decision. But there has been broad agreement that the debt reduction was inevitable in view of Argentina’s unsustainable debt burden; and that, controversial as its implementation was, the successful restructurings of 2005 and 2010 played a critical role in restoring growth and financial stability in the economy.
The Guardian
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Ha-Joon Chang
Colonialism is back. Well, at least according to leading politicians of the two most famous debtor nations. Commenting on the EU's inability to deliver its end of the bargain despite the savage spending cuts Greece had delivered, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the opposition Syriza party, said last week that his country was becoming a "debt colony". A couple of days later, Hernán Lorenzino, Argentina's economy minister, used the term "judicial colonialism" to denounce the US court ruling that his country has to pay in full a group of "vulture funds" that had held out from the debt restructuring that followed the country's 2002 default.
Reuters
Sunday, November 25, 2012
(Reuters) - Argentina will to go an appeals court in New York on Monday to challenge the ruling of a U.S. judge who last week issued a decision that raised the specter of a technical default by the South American country, a newspaper said.
A decade after committing the biggest sovereign default in history, Argentina faces another crisis after a U.S. court ordered it to pay $1.3 billion to holders of defaulted bonds.
International Financing Review
Saturday, November 24, 2012
By Christopher Whittall
The latest twist in the legal battle between Argentina and hedge fund holdouts of its 2005 and 2010 bond exchanges has cast doubt on whether credit default swaps referencing the country’s debt may trigger.
US District Court Judge Thomas Griesa ruled on Wednesday that Argentina must pay holdouts when it comes to make regular payments to exchanged bondholders in December.
This will not apply to a US$42m coupon payment on new 2017 bonds on December 2, but a US$3bn payment due on December 15 to holders of GDP warrants and a US$200m coupon payment to discount bondholders on December 31 will not be able to proceed without also paying the holdouts.
Reuters
Saturday, November 24, 2012
By Felix Salmon
If you want to follow all the ins and outs of Elliott vs Argentina in the mainstream press, you’ll soon find something very interesting. It’s a US case, in a US court, which is very likely to have profound consequences for both US markets in general and for one of America’s most diplomatically important laws, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. But to a first approximation, the US press simply hasn’t noticed.
Most US outlets have carried a single dry and dutiful report, buried on an inside page, somewhere; the NYT didn’t even manage that, relying instead on a wire report from the AP in Buenos Aires. The WSJ has not been much better, although its report is notable for getting notoriously reclusive fund manager David Martinez* on the record — a sign that if they put their mind to it, US journalists could really add some value here.
Business Insider
Sunday, November 25, 2012
By Walter Kurtz
Argentina CDS spread has blown out to new highs last week. In spite of Argentina's government driving the nation's economy into the ground (see discussion), this widening was caused by increased risks of the so-called "technical default" rather than deteriorating economic conditions.
For years, bond holders of Argentina's government debt (issued under NY law), who did not participate in Argentina's restructuring plan from the 2001 default, have been fighting to be treated equally (pro rata) with those who had accepted the restructuring terms. But Argentina has insisted that that those who did not play ball in their restructuring plan - the "holdouts" - should get nothing. Last week however a US judge gave Argentina a Thanksgiving surprise by ruling in favor of the holdouts. That means the holdouts will need to be paid everything that the restructuring participants got over the years, including all the interest.
Global Post
Saturday, November 24, 2012
LIMA, Peru — Argentina’s ongoing fight with a “vulture fund” looking to profit from the South American nation’s economic crisis of a decade ago may be about to trigger more global financial turbulence after a surprise US court ruling.
A federal Court of Appeals judge in New York ruled Wednesday that the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner pay $1.3 billion to NML Capital by Dec. 15, sending ripples through bond markets, AP reported.
The New York Times
Friday, November 23, 2012
By Katy Burne
The cost to insure Argentina sovereign bonds against nonpayment soared 15% Friday to its highest since April 2009 on increased concern that the country may not honor its financial obligations in the next few weeks.
Partly driving the increase, a U.S. judge on Thursday ordered Argentina to pay all creditors on its outstanding bonds, even those that didn't agree to new terms on its debt following the nation's default in 2001. The U.S. district court judge said that before Argentina pays some $3 billion to holders of bonds that were retooled, it has to satisfy payments due to the holdouts, who are owed $1.3 billion.
Financial Times
Friday, November 23, 2012
By Jude Webber and Robin Wigglesworth
The lady is not for turning. Only this week, facing a general strike in Argentina, Cristina Fernández thundered: “Nobody pushes me around, least of all bullies with hooligan tactics.”
Judging by her government’s furious reaction to a New York court ruling ordering Argentina to pay $1.33bn to the holders of defaulted bonds by December 15, she counts Judge Thomas Griesa among them.
Fox News Latino
Friday, November 23, 2012
A U.S. federal judge is telling Argentina to stop procrastinating and pay its debt -- a whopping $1.3 billion -- by the middle of December.
The judge ordered Argentina to pay immediately and in full everything it owes to what President Christina Fernandez calls "vulture funds" that she blames for much of her country's troubles. That adds up to $1.3 billion, due by Dec. 15.
Reuters
Friday, November 23, 2012
By Daniel Bases
(Reuters) - Investors holding $1 billion worth of restructured Argentine debt say they are preparing to appeal a U.S. court ruling that they fear would trigger another default and prevent them from being paid principal and interest due on their bonds next month.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered late on Wednesday that Argentina immediately pay a separate group of holdout investors who rejected two debt restructuring offers the $1.33 billion in judgments they have won in court, a stinging blow to the country's efforts to overcome a 2002 debt crisis.
The Independent
Friday, November 23, 2012
By Nikhil Kumar
With his trimmed white beard and rounded metal spectacles, Paul Singer might come across as a slightly miffed professor, his lips pursed and one eyebrow arched a touch higher than the other.
Financial Times
Friday, November 23, 2012
By Andrew Schnipani
The ballyhoo over a New York court ruling ordering Argentina to pay $1.3bn to holdout creditors, has raised questions over whether Ecuador could also be dragged to court by so-called vulture funds.
Unfortunately for some bondholders, but luckily for Ecuador’s government, it seems very unlikely, at least according to some commentators consulted by beyondbrics.
“There a very few holdouts, I don’t think there is any reason to think what happened [to Argentina] would happen to Ecuador,”said Alberto Wray, an Ecuadorian lawyer based in Washington DC. “There is no debt whatsoever that could be claimed from the Ecuadorian state.”
The Economist
Friday, November 23, 2012
ON OCTOBER 26th an appeals court in New York sent shock waves through the sovereign debt markets, when it upheld a ruling that Argentina could not service the bonds it issued in its 2005 and 2010 debt restructurings unless it also paid the investors who rejected its offer in those exchanges. The decision left Argentina with a mere glimmer of hope: the court asked Thomas Griesa, the judge responsible for the case, to determine precisely how much Argentina would have to pay the “hold-out” creditors in order to stay current on its performing obligations. If Judge Griesa decided to show mercy to Argentina, he could have merely required the country to make a matching payment to the hold-outs whenever it paid interest on its debt, or devised any other formula that would have limited Argentina’s responsibilities to its bitter financial rivals to an acceptably small sum.
Prime Economics
Saturday, November 24, 2012
By Jeremy Smith and Ann Pettifor
Few of our readers (we suspect) will have heard of NML Capital Ltd – a company which today is at the centre of an extraordinary and damaging New York court judgment relating to the sovereign debts of Argentina. NML Capital was founded by Republican-funder Paul Singer, of the US$19bn hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation. Here is how Fortune magazine describe Mr Singer:
“Over the past 35 years Singer, 67, has produced an extraordinary 14% average annual return after fees…He’s achieved that record in large part by buying the debt of bankrupt companies and nations — a strategy that has earned him considerable opprobrium in some circles. His firm, which is engaged in a costly, protracted legal war with Argentina over its defaulted sovereign debt, is so influential that fear of its tactics helped shape the current Greek debt restructuring. Among the sophisticated investors who have placed their confidence in Singer is Mitt Romney himself. According to Romney’s financial disclosures, the trust managing his more than $200 million fortune has at least $1 million invested with Elliott.
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