Vulture fund says that Argentina spent US$250 million on lawyers

El Cronista

Vulture fund says that Argentina spent US$250 million on lawyers

 

Monday, May 06, 2013

 

By Laura Garcia

 

After everything, Argentina’s arch-enemy, Paul Singer, is also human.  And not only resistant to being called a vulture.  He also seems a little tired of a legal battle as arduous as it is onerous.

 

Thus at least he let it be known in his latest letter to investors from the multimillionaire that is at the head of the lawsuit against Argentina over the debt in default.

 

“It’s a little known fact that Elliott began buying Argentine debt before the default of 2001,” says the head of a fund that manages almost US$22 billion and today is suing the country for payment of some US$1.3 billion.

 

According to Argentina, however, the bonds involved in the case had been acquired in 2008 for only US$48.7 billion.

 

Of course, a decade of litigation isn’t just for anyone.  And Singer lets off steam: “To litigate is expensive and few have the means, the tools or the stomach to put up with an excessively long legal battle with an intractable adversary, if not irrational.”

 

And he even risks an estimate for the controversy, saying that Argentina has already spent approximately US$250 million on legal bills related to more than 20 lawsuits.

 

Could one conjecture that this same Singer being highly focused on the costs of a battle is an indicator of the certain readiness of mood to negotiate?

 

With difficult.  But it’s clear that it contrasts with the combative Singer of last November, who said sarcastically that he hadn’t bought Argentine debt to end up with “a boat too large to sail off Long Island,” an allusion, clearly, to the attachment of the Frigate Libertad.

 

Meanwhile, the market awaits the decision of the Court of Appeals with attention paid to the central issue of the intermediaries and the possibility that the court would intercept any payment destined to the exchange bondholders to guarantee payment to the vulture funds.  Beyond the clear recovery of bonds mounted upon the expectation of a gadget which allows the eluding of a negative ruling, few believe there will be some favorable surprise.  “We are convinced that the scenario of a negotiated solution is unlikely during the Kirchner administration and we are concerned about a re-routing of payments being difficult to implement from the point of view of the mechanics,” said Vladimir Werning of JPMorgan in his report last week.

 

In any case, it isn’t only Argentina that Singer rants about.

 

He doubts that the Cypriot crisis will be an isolated case as Europe is striving to emphasize, saying that the bureaucrats of the Fed could carry the United States to another depression with their policy of indiscriminate emission and he complains about the fall of gold prices.  But nobody angers him like Argentina.