CreditSlips

An earlier post noted that bankruptcy filings were down substantially over 50% the first two weeks of April. As the American Bankruptcy Institute reported, bankruptcy filings declined by 46% over the entire month and on a year-over-year basis.

Mitu Gulati and Mark Weidemaier

We have been working on building a dataset of sovereign bonds and their contract terms. Given the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic--close to 100 countries have approached the IMF for assistance--we would not have been surprised if few low- to mid-income countries had issued sovereign bonds in recent months. Instead, there have been large issuances by Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Philippines, Hungary, Mexico and others. 

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

The sovereign debt world has been debating how to design an emergency debt standstill for the poorest nations, so that they can devote scarce resources to public health rather than debt service. As we’ve discussed on this blog, the question has come up as to whether countries might be able to use the customary international law doctrine of necessity to defend against creditor lawsuits.

$10 billion of CARES Act funds are going to the banks, especially megabanks, in fees for making “small” business PPP loans. The fees, paid by the Small Business Administration, i.e. Treasury, range from 1% for loans above $2 million to 5% for loans below $350,000.

Mitu and I posted some preliminary thoughts about the defense of necessity, which might be raised as a basis for allowing sovereign borrowers to defer debt service during the crisis. I wanted to follow up on some of the open issues. A few are technical, addressing some potential objections to the defense.