Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in late March sent Economy Minister Martin Guzman to hold meetings with U.S. officials and the International Monetary Fund over its $45 billion loan, Bloomberg News reported. Back home, Fernandez’s populist vice president took to the microphone to make one thing clear. “We can’t pay because we don’t have the money,” said Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who held the nation’s top job from 2007 to 2015. The IMF’s terms are “unacceptable.” It was a telling moment. When Fernandez, 62, took office in the final days of 2019, he presented himself as pragmatic.
Read more
Stoneway Capital Ltd., the owner of four power plants in Argentina, filed for bankruptcy in New York on Wednesday after an Argentine Supreme Court ruling against the company prolonged the closure of one of its generation facilities, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Stoneway missed an interest payment on March 1, 2020, and soon after entered forbearance agreements with its creditors, according to a declaration filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York by David Mack, Stoneway’s sole director.
Read more
Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman said finalizing a plan with the International Monetary Fund to repay $45 billion in debt likely won’t happen by May or June, Bloomberg News reported. Changing the terms of a previous repayment program would require the support of nations like the U.S., China, Germany, Japan and France, the finance minister said in an interview with CNN Espanol. The Argentine government is unable to pay the IMF the $45 billion required between September 2021 and 2024, he said.
Read more
Bondholders filed suit in New York on Tuesday against Argentina's Buenos Aires province after talks broke down over restructuring $7.1 billion in provincial debt as the country’s leftist government seeks a larger accommodation with the International Monetary Fund to regain market access, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. GoldenTree Asset Management LP and other investment firms sought a judgment in the U.S. District Court in New York over the province’s failure to make debt payments stretching back to April of last year.
Read more
After nearly a year of extending the deadline of its debt restructuring proposal, fresh documents published by Argentina’s largest province show talks remain stuck, Bloomberg News reported. The province of Buenos Aires presented the details of a proposal shown to one of its largest creditors, GoldenTree Asset Management, under a nondisclosure agreement which has since expired, according to a statement posted online.
Argentine farmer Javier Rotondo says he should be reaping a historic bounty with grain prices surging to their highest level in years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, he reduced his corn crop by 20% after authorities temporarily suspended exports to reduce food prices, one of several measures by Argentina’s leftist government that economists say are suffocating business. Mr. Rotondo expects to take on debt to pay a new wealth tax, and he is bracing for price controls after President Alberto Fernández recently warned ranchers that rising beef prices won’t be tolerated.
Read more
Argentina’s state-owned oil producer looks set to avoid a hard default after creditors signed on to swap some of their bonds due next month and the central bank agreed to provide the company with the dollars it needs to pay back the remainder, Bloomberg News reported. YPF SA bondholders will exchange almost 60% of the $413 million note due in March, according to a company statement.
YPF SA, Argentina’s state-run oil driller and refiner, looks set to avoid a costly default next month after it won support for a debt swap from a large creditor group, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called Ad Hoc Bondholder Group, which holds 45% of YPF’s 2021 notes, expressed support for the exchange after the company increased its cash sweetener over the weekend, according to a statement. Bonds due in 2021 rose 4.5 cents to 95 cents on the dollar as of 10:40 am in New York, the highest since Jan. 8. The company’s shares climbed as much as 6%.
In the 99 years since it was founded to pump the oil fields of Patagonia, Argentine energy driller YPF SA has been whipsawed by countless booms and busts. If global oil markets weren’t collapsing, it seemed, then Argentina was mired in a debt crisis that was wreaking havoc on the whole nation’s finances. Never, though, had the company been pushed into a large-scale default of any kind, Bloomberg News reported. Until, it would appear, now. Word of this came in an odd way: Officials at state-run YPF sent a press release laying out a plan to saddle creditors with losses in a debt exchange.