News Topic: Sovereign Debt

Just two sunny weekend days after NML et al. filed their rejection of Argentina's offer, a new batch of defaulted bond holders have come to ask the court for their piece of Argentina's pari passu distribution . ... Read full article

Creditors owed identical amounts under identical defaulted Argentine bonds, including identical pari passu clauses, could get very different recoveries under the plaintiffs' theory of ratable payment--unless all such creditors are corralled into a ... Read full article

Surprise, surprise -- NML and colleagues would just as soon pass on Argentina's offer of 2010 restructuring terms . Plaintiffs' submission (ahead of schedule) is full of the sort of language I love to learn in this case and deploy ... Read full article

Italy does not do things half-way. Of all the pari passu clauses on the planet, it had the one that most definitely, unambiguously, no-two-ways-about-it promised ratable payment to its bondholders. In English. Just search for "ratably" here ... Read full article

I find recent court action in NML v. Argentina  much more intriguing than Argentina's proposal last Friday to reopen its 2010 debt exchange. ... Read full article

Some thoughts on Cyprus, over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

A key point is at risk of getting buried in all the din surrounding Cyprus's deposit levy (apparently poised for parliamentary defeat ). To me it comes through most clearly in the  latest from the tornado-chasing (or front-running ?) duo, Lee ... Read full article

Stepping back from the Cyprus bail-in, I'm wondering if it is penny-wise, pound-foolish. The depositor tax is only supposed to raise about $7.25 billion (5.8 billion Euros).  Given the risks created by a bailout being rejected and the risk of runs ... Read full article

Anyone want to take bets on whether there will be runs on Italian, Spanish, and Portugese deposits? That's my bet. I'm not sure that we'll see small retail depositor runs, but I would predict that high dollar deposits in all of those ... Read full article

Cyprus seems to be the next European domino to fall to bailoutitis.  Here's the situation as I understand it. Cyprus has unmanageable government debt, not least because of the liabilities that stem from supporting the insolvent banking sector. The EU ... Read full article

Black smoke ... White smoke? ... Argentina wins! ... Nope, black smoke ... Can you stand the suspense? ... the whiplash? One day, Second Circuit judges slap down Argentina . ... Read full article

Mark makes an immensely important point in his post  on the latest in NML v. Argentina ; it merits emphasis and perhaps an extension. The fact that a U.S. ... Read full article

The pari passu hearing is over and done and, as Anna Gelpern described, what a hearing it was . Perhaps most interesting was the panel's apparent openness to an alternative payment formula that wouldn't require Argentina to pay the full ... Read full article

I am just back from joining 250+ other obsessed (and some paid) persons at the second Second Circuit hearing on the pari passu clause in NML v. Argentina . ... Read full article

I am not a litigator, and would never venture to read the scheduling tea leaves to predict case outcomes. That said, two things about next Wednesday's hearing in what some call " trial of the century " strike this civilian as pretty odd. ... Read full article

NML v. ... Read full article

The briefs have been filed in NML v. Argentina (a complete set here ), and the Second Circuit has revised the hearing schedule , expanding the time for oral argument on February 27 to a total of 49 minutes. ... Read full article

Periodically, I get emails from media relations firms on behalf of American Task Force Argentina, a somewhat hard-to-pin-down group organized, as best I can tell, to lobby the US government to pressure Argentina to pay holdouts like Elliott Associates. ... Read full article