Argentina

A final accord on Argentina’s debt with the Paris Club group of creditors could take months to negotiate and wouldn’t place the country’s economic growth and social programs at risk, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said, Bloomberg reported. Kicillof, presented a proposal to Paris Club Chairman Ramon Fernandez in the French capital yesterday. Officials from the group’s 19 countries will discuss the offer tomorrow, Kicillof said at a press conference in Buenos Aires today. He declined to give details of the plan.

What the US Supreme Court decides in a key court case involving Argentina and its bondholders will greatly impact how sovereign debt restructuring is done in the future, the BBC reported. The essence of the decade-long lawsuit between the country and a handful of its creditors is: Can bondholders demand full repayment of what they lent to a country even when others have settled for a haircut? Argentina's 2002 default of around $100bn (£61bn) was the largest at the time, until Greece's around 200bn euros debt restructuring.

The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a landmark appeal by Argentina of a lower court's order to pay around $1.5 billion to two hedge funds, the Global Post reported on an Agence France-Presse story. But the decision did not end Argentina's avenues to challenge the 2012 ruling, supported in August on appeal, that it had to pay back all holders of its defaulted bonds, whether or not they took part in a restructuring of those bonds.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday took no action on an appeal by the government of Argentina in a closely watched sovereign-debt case, The Wall Street Journal reported. The high court added eight new cases to its docket Tuesday but made no mention of Argentina's appeal. The court could indicate as soon as next Monday what it plans to do with the case. At issue is Argentina's legal fight with holdout creditors that refused to accept the country's debt-restructuring offers after its historic default in 2001.

The thriving currency black market on postcard Florida Street in the commercial centre of Argentina’s capital is a result of strict foreign exchange controls introduced in 2011 to stem capital flight, the Financial Times reported. In the “caves”, dollars can be sold for close to double the official rate of 5.7 pesos. Argentina’s artificially overvalued currency is one of an array of economic problems facing Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president.

Argentina's government will reopen a 2005 debt swap for a second time after an adverse ruling in a New York court last week, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move, unveiled by President Cristina Kirchner Monday, comes as the government deals with the fallout from a U.S court decision last week that ordered Argentina to pay a group of so-called holdout bondholders 100% of the roughly $1.33 billion they are owed in principal and accrued interest. The Kirchner administration has refused to pay the holdouts, saying they don't deserve 100% of what they are owed under U.S. law.

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.