Sovereign Debt

Cyprus Bailout: What Happened to Absolute Priority?

03/16/13

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 will put in money to pay off Cyprus's bondholders, but only if there is a copay from Cypriot taxpayers.  Cyprus seems to have decided that the best way to do this co-pay is a (supposedly) one-time tax on all bank deposits. The tax is slightly progressive, with a higher rate on big Euro deposits.  

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Tea Leaves Two Ways (Pari Passu Prognosticating)

03/14/13

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

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Sovereign Bankruptcy, Day One: Market Rallies

03/01/13

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.

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Pari passu realpolitik (big news, and a goodbye)

03/01/13

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 accelerated debt immediately. But it looked unlikely that such a compromise could be reached.

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Trial of the Century or Private Ceremony? (Pari Passu's Little Mysteries)

02/25/13

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.

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Forty-nine minutes of contempt (Argentina edition)

02/14/13

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.

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Hardship and sacrifice, now at the Warwick Hotel

01/23/13

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.

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An Empirical Overview of Modern Sovereign Debt Litigation

01/04/13

In December, I attended a terrific conference examining historical parallels to the European debt crisis. I was there to talk about the early-20th century antecedents of modern collective action clauses, the magic contractual potion - or is it snake oil?

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