Argentina

The International Monetary Fund is preparing to back Argentina in a long-running legal battle with hedge funds that has broad repercussions for how governments around the world deal with their creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde plans to recommend to the fund's executive board next week that the IMF file a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to take the case for review and overturn a lower court's ruling.

Argentina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling against it in a case over the nation’s defaulted debt, Bloomberg reported. The South American nation claims a federal appeals court in New York was wrong when it ruled in October that investors in restructured Argentine debt can’t be paid unless holders of the nation’s defaulted bonds, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and its NML Capital Ltd. unit, are also paid.

When Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the economy was collapsing and a bloody popular revolt had helped topple two presidents in a week. Now, the country could default again, but it would be over a matter of principle rather than necessity, Reuters reported. After a decade of sleepy litigation, investors got a jolt late last year when U.S. courts ruled in favor of "holdout" creditors who had rejected Argentine debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010 and sued to be repaid in full on their defaulted bonds. A U.S.

Argentine officials say their plan for paying $1.4 billion in defaulted debt is fully within the spirit of U.S. court rulings, the Associated Press reported. But Wall Street analysts say the offer looks nothing like the letter of the law as the appellate court sees it. They say the mix of new bonds to be paid out over the next 25 years boils down to just one-sixth of what Argentina was told to hand over in cash.

Argentina may learn at any time whether a U.S. appeals court will rule that it must pay $1.4 billion to holders of its defaulted debt, something the South American country has resisted for more than a decade, Bloomberg reported. The court in New York is set to rule after Argentina submitted a payment proposal last week that would force holders of defaulted bonds to take a steep discount on debt the nation repudiated in its record 2001 default on $95 billion. With further appeals unlikely to succeed, the ruling may be the last word on the matter.

Argentina is hoping an offer it must make to a US appeals court by Good Friday spelling out exactly what it is prepared to pay its “holdout” creditors will be enough to avoid crucifixion in its high-stakes sovereign debt drama, the Financial Times reported. The saga – which centres on interpretation of two little words in Latin: pari passu , or equal treatment – has gripped the international financial industry for months. It has pushed Argentina almost to the brink of a new default and raised fears that the case could set a precedent making sovereign restructurings harder in future.

Argentina has greeted an order from a US appeals court for more information on its offer to holdout creditors as a glimmer of hope in its fight not to pay “vulture funds” without a steep writedown on their debt, the Financial Times reported. “We are not trying to convince the vultures to participate, we are trying to convince the judges, and that’s why it’s a good sign that the court has asked Argentina what the 2010 offer means,” Hernán Lorenzino, the economy minister, told the newspaper Página 12.

Worries that Argentina is inching closer to default sent the cost of insuring the country's government bonds to their highest level since November and pushed shares in its benchmark index lower, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move followed remarks made by Argentina's lawyer in a U.S. appeals court hearing in New York on Wednesday, suggesting the government would choose to default if ordered to pay creditors who hadn't agreed to new terms for their debt resulting from the country's 2001 default.

Argentina’s messy legal battle with hedge funds over its 2001 sovereign default has heightened calls to resurrect plans for a bankruptcy regime for countries, under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Times reported. Many senior lawyers, fund managers and former policy makers say recent court rulings against Argentina highlight the weaknesses of the current approach to government debt workouts, and argue that it is time to revisit the “sovereign debt restructuring mechanism” proposed by the IMF in 2002.

Investors who hold Argentina's restructured debt are seeking to have New York's highest court consider whether a bond provision requires the country to equally treat holders of defaulted and new bonds, Bloomberg News reported today. The bondholder group, which includes Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and AllianceBernstein LP, said in a court filing that interpretation by the state Court of Appeals in Albany is needed to determine whether Argentina must make payments on defaulted bonds when it pays holders of restructured debt, as a federal court judge ordered it to do.