Elliott lost $101.1 million buying phony promissory notes from Marc Dreier, the New York lawyer who pleaded guilty to defrauding hedge funds out of $400 million.

Isn’t Afraid
For decades, Singer has reigned as a master of waging –and winning — protracted legal battles. He isn’t afraid of taking on corporations or governments to collect on defaulted debt. During the past 35 years, his fund has returned an average of 14 percent a year, according to his annual letter to investors.
The government of Peru in 2000 agreed to pay him $58 million, a 400 percent profit, on the debt of two Peruvian banks he’d purchased four years earlier.
Singer has battled Argentina for a decade after buying more than $600 million of that country’s debt, some for as little as 15 cents on the dollar. In 2005, then-President Nestor Kirchner offered to swap the defaulted bonds for new ones worth about 30 cents on the dollar. About three-quarters of bondholders accepted.
Elliott’s NML Capital unit went to court for full payment and has since won five judgments totaling $1.6 billion. Six other lawsuits are pending. On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by NML to seize $105 million of Argentina’s central bank deposits held in New York.
Elliott’s lawyers are preparing to argue in July that the Second U.S. Court of Appeals in New York should require Argentina to settle in full.
‘A Lot of Work’

“It takes a lot of work to play this game, and very few people have the commitment,” says Anna Gelpern, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law.

Singer has also had outright flops. In 2009, Elliott lost $101.1 million buying phony promissory notes from Marc Dreier, the New York lawyer who pleaded guilty to defrauding hedge funds out of $400 million.
In fighting the Sada family, Singer is also squaring off against David Martinez, a 55-year-old Monterrey native who himself is a hedge fund mogul dealing in distressed debt. Martinez, founder of New York-based Fintech Advisory Inc., came onboard in the fall of 2009.
Martinez provided $75 million in financing and helped Vitro move its most profitable units beyond the reach of creditors. This isn’t the first time the two hedge fund bosses have crossed swords. Martinez has helped Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador restructure their debt.
Legal Maneuvers
In 2005, he filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Argentina, opposing one of Singer’s attempts to win payment.
At Fintech’s behest, Vitro devised the plan that shuffled the holding company’s assets so that the glassmaker eventually ended up owing $1.9 billion to its own subsidiaries. The maneuver was kept hidden from creditors for 10 months, according to public documents and court papers. Martinez declined to comment.
The court challenges have taken their toll on Vitro executives.
“It’s tough to manage the business under this situation,” says Lara, jabbing the air with his Montblanc pen. Adrian Sada says he’s drained but optimistic.
“The past three years have been the toughest,” he says, sitting in a conference room across the street from conveyor belts laden with Coke bottles. He says he has never feared he would lose the company his great-grandfather, Francisco Sada, started with Isaac Garza as an offshoot of Cuauhtemoc brewery. The families established the glass factory in 1909 to provide a steady supply of bottles.
Grew Rich
The Sadas grew rich and powerful as Monterrey, capital of the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon, emerged as Mexico’s industrial heartland. Adrian Sada became Vitro chairman in 1991, says company spokesman Roberto Riva Palacio. He paid almost $1 billion for Tampa, Florida-based Anchor Glass Container Corp. and Latchford Glass Co. in Huntington Park, California.
The timing was disastrous, coming as soft-drink makers switched to plastic. Vitro sold Anchor for $392.5 million in 1997, less than half of what it had paid. The company shed a home appliance unit and cut costs to convince investors to buy $1.2 billion of bonds in 2007.

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