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Samstag, 28. Juli 2012

Exit Consents Killed in England? // hammerhart.....die Bondholder sind doch nicht rechtlos.....

Exit Consents Killed in England?

posted by Anna Gelpern
 
 
 
The English High Court just ruled in Assenagon Asset Management S.A. v. Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Limited (formerly Anglo Irish Bank) that a popular technique used to pressure bondholders to participate in a debt restructuring, as deployed by Anglo Irish in late 2010, violated English law and the terms of the Trust Deed. I have not been able to find a link to the opinion yet, but there is some good reporting here and here, including links and block quotes. This is potentially huge for bank, sovereign, and all manner of other bond restructuring--plus competition among financial jurisdictions.
Exit consents are essentially votes by bondholders participating in a bond exchange to amend the old bonds on their way out, so as to make them unattractive to holdouts. The issuer typically asks participating holders to amend the old debt as part of the exchange offer. Knowing that exit consents are on the table makes creditors think twice before holding out: if participation is high enough for the exit vote to succeed, holdouts can see the value of their bonds evaporate, lose enforcement rights, or "merely" lose all liquidity in the remaining instruments. In the Anglo Irish case, non-participating sub debt was made subject to a call option at 1 cent on 1000 euros.
In 1986, the Delaware Chancery Court said in Katz v. Oak Industries Inc (508 A.2d 873) that exit consents were not a breach of good faith by the issuer. The English High Court said that they amount to an abuse of power by the majority, "oppressive and unfair" to the minority. Interestingly, it did not distinguish between the super-nasty exit consents of the sort used in Anglo Irish and the middling defensive sort used in the past by other debtors, such as Uruguay. The English court also ruled that the exiting votes should not have been counted because they were effectively cast on behalf of the debtor, Anglo Irish, and should have been ignored by the terms of the trust deed. Note that even though the English court ruled on grounds easily distinguishable from Katz, it made a point of parting ways with Katz.
Here is why this is a really big deal:
1. The exit consent technique is *pervasive*. Tons of past and imminent restructurings (think Spanish banks) are at stake. Contrary to press reports, however, Greece did not use exit consents in its English law bond exchange, so that is in the clear.
2. Particularly for sovereigns and banks, where there is no bankruptcy or bankruptcy/resolution is fraught with systemic consequences, this decision takes away a major source of flexibility (bondhoders might say abuse). Bail-in just got harder when it might matter the most.
3. The contours of inter-creditor good faith duties just got broader and fuzzier (see also here). The operation of good faith in bondholder votes going forward could be a challenge. This could have particularly big implications for widespread adoption and use of Collective Action Clauses.
4. Now there is another big incentive for bondholders to use English law. People are already paying attention, after Greece ran roughshod over its local law debt but ended up paying on some English law bonds. This is another, potentially more broadly applicable reason to come to London.
5.The decision shows courts can and do rule on principle, market and policy consequences be darned. I might be tempted to temper my views on the Second Circuit pari passu argument as a result.
This will certainly be appealed and tested broadly. So much for a quiet August and beyond.

Comments

Hmm, I still wonder what effect that will have long term?
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Freitag, 27. Juli 2012

Latin America Emerging Markets Research


Argentina: US Appeals Court bashes Argentina... as it did in the past prior to ruling in its favor


The possibility of anticipating an Appeals Court ruling looks futile particularly when lack of a precedent means that even legal experts are unable to use point to legal references to connect or cut the dots presented by two sides in dispute. Today's hearing for a case between holdout creditors vs. Argentina over the right interpretation of pari passu is a case in point.
The judges' bashing of Argentina's defense for ignoring multiple court orders to pay its remaining defaulted debt is likely to have made the biggest impression on the public at the hearing. Interruptions and requests for clarification from the judges targeted at the appellant (Argentina) far outnumbered those aimed at the plaintiffs (holdout creditors). If this were a good metric with which to imagine the future ruling then the press is very likely to convey the impression that markets need to price greater risk of the Appeals Court delivering an adverse ruling for Argentina.
However, this bashing of Argentina's behavior as a debtor was also a common thread in other appeals involving Argentina (the attachment of defaulted bonds in the debt exchange (2005) and attachment of central bank assets held in the Fed wire (2011). Notwithstanding the scolding, in both cases the Appeals Court rulings ended up favoring Argentina (and in the latter case thereby reversing Judge Griesa's district court ruling).
Putting all the considerations (see below) on the scales we believe that the litigation will be a drawn out process in which it appears that Argentina has a modest upper hand. But that upper hand is one that is not sufficient to completely dispel the uncertainty over a potential future disruption by holdout creditors of the coupon payments for restructured debt holders of US law securities.
So what color from the hearing might one point to in support of this base case scenario ?
First, setting a precedent on purely technical grounds for a broad interpretation of the breach of pari passu clause seems to be an undesirable task for the judges which is riddled with challenges.
A incisive inquiry from the judges as to whether 6 years of non-payment (as opposed to 6 months) might constituted subordination seemed initially to suggest the Court might want to sway in on the broad definition in favor of holdouts. But as the hearing progressed it seemed evident that the less compromising way to uphold the District judge's injunctions (and hence, favor holdout creditors) would be to avoid dealing with the ambiguities surrounding a broad interpretation altogether and instead focus on the narrow interpretation of the breach of pari passu related to the existence of the Argentina's "lock law". The judges did seek to clarify if the US government had an opinion on this which the US chose to avoid - thus, giving the impression that it was not opposing a narrow ruling regarding breach of pari passu (in contrast to its clear opposition to a broad ruling, see below).
Alternatively, the least compromising way to explicitly repeal the broad interpretation of pari passu (and hence, favor Argentina) would be to accept the understanding of the controversial pari passu clause presented in the Clearinghouse's amicus brief, assuming its represents adequately market practitioners' views and conventions. Argentina's defense repeatedly referred to the Clearinghouse, US government and Bank of England opinions on pari passu as evidence of how the Court should rule. In struggling to understand whether the debt exchange subordinated holdout creditors, however, the judges did not choose to focus on the Clearinghouse opinion. But judges did hear and it seems reasonable to assume that they were swayed by the US government view against a broad interpretation of the pari passu breach.
Argentina's defense argued that pari pasu means "equal rank" as opposed to "equal treatment" and argued that if the Court ruled that Argentina had to pay holdouts pro-rata then holdout's undiscounted claims (100% principal + interest) implied "unequal treatment." Yet the judges seem to favor debating whether to frame the concept of subordination in relation the timing bond holders get paid (and ignore the amount they got paid). Argentina also argued that pari passu was meant to avoid the conversion of unsecured subordinated debt into secured debt, something Argentina did not do through the exchange or through the lock law.
These considerations suggest that Argentina has more chances to get off the hook than not but they do not suggest Argentina is home free at this stage because a potential ruling against Argentina on a narrow (and convenient) basis cannot be totally discarded. True, on strictly technical grounds, Argentina's defense argued convincingly that the lock law reflected a division of democratic powers across Argentine government rather than a simple unsurmountable obstacle to paying holdouts akin to subordination). But the lock law seems to offer a scape goat in this complex litigation too convenient to ignore: upholding injunctions against Argentina because of the lock law puts pressure on Argentina to address holdout claims in some fashion while it avoids setting a potentially unsettling precedent affecting resolution of sovereign debt restructurings.
Second, if this is indeed the base scenario then the question that might arise is whether the injunctions against Argentina and the bondholder trustee domiciled in the US constitute an adequate remedy for plaintiff. In discussing this matter at first glance the judges seem to be establishing a tie between Argentina and holdouts. On one hand, the judges repeatedly insisted on distinguishing injunctions awarded from attachments (a point that can be considered to favor Argentina). On the other hand, the judges entertained the idea that injunctions did not explicitly oblige Argentina to pay holdout creditors but simply disallowed Argentina from paying other creditors if it did not also pay holdouts (a point that can be considered to favor holdout creditor).
Indeed, the latter plays into the strategy holdouts hope will give them "leverage" over Argentina because it places the burden on Argentina to decide what to do: either (A) transfer the cash for restructured bond payments and face pro-rata of the funds (a default de facto, but less clear if is a event of default de jure that triggers CDS), (B) not transfer funds to restructured debt holders and face default (triggering CDS), or settling with holdouts separately and transferring the payments to restructured creditors without the pro-rata threat.
Holdout creditors have been arguing that pari passu does not threaten other bondholders since Argentina has the capacity to pay both creditor classes and - if given the injunctions - the incentive to do so. Interestingly Argentina seemed to score a point in terms of considering that capacity to pay could not be related to its $46 billion of reserves because these reserves had been protected by a prior Appeals Court ruling on the grounds of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
What does all this imply? Hard to say except that it raises a doubt as to whether injunctions are worthwhile justifying and awarding. Note that it does seem to make sense for Argentina to offer to repeal the lock law as an alternative remedy to injunctions. But in the hearing Argentina did not do so (preferring to argue why the lock law technically did not violate pari passu) nor did the judges (they would not be inclined to do something akin to explicitly request another country change its laws). But it remains worthwhile to recall that the law was effectively suspended for a year in 2010 and has already achieved its original purpose (inducing a high 92% investor acceptance of the restructuring) leaving Argentina with little need to defend its existence.
Third, it seemed that confronted with the question of the effectiveness of injunctions as a remedy, holdout creditors anticipated their potential strategy to the Court in a way that might not be supportive of a ruling in their favor. Although plaintiffs argued that the injunctions would be complied by Argentina due to their potential effect on market access or diplomatic relations, they also mentioned that they could use them to go after financial institutions that assist Argentina in being in contempt of court, in this case the bondholder trustee (Bank of NY). Argentina, of course, argued that money held by a trustee in US jurisdiction was not Argentina's and that money used to transfer funds to the bondholder trustee was spared attachment by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act..
Evidently this implies that the outstanding litigation would not necessarily solve the issue at hand but instead further increase the burden of more lawsuits faced by the courts, a scenario that the Court might not sympathize with.
 
 
 



(1-212) 834-4144
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

Why Argentina’s likely to beat Elliott Associates


Why Argentina’s likely to beat Elliott Associates

By Felix Salmon
July 25, 2012
There were lines out the door of 500 Pearl Street on Monday afternoon, as a surprisingly large crowd of jurists and hedgies and bankers and wonks — and even a few journalists — filed into the Ceremonial Coutroom of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for an hour-long hearing about two sentences in old Argentine bond documentation. The case is huge in the world of sovereign debt, arguably the biggest that world has ever seen. And it was no surprise to see Treasury’s lawyer get up in front of the judges to make his case that they should overturn Thomas Griesa’s lower-court decision, which seeks to force Argentina to pay off its holdout bond creditors.
If you want some extremely smart analysis of what happened at the hearing, I’d point you to two pieces: Anna Gelpern’s, at Credit Slips, and Vladimir Werning’s, for JP Morgan. The two of them take different routes to arrive at much the same conclusion: although Argentina’s lawyer, Jonathan Blackman, got beaten up much more than Ted Olson, who was representing Elliott Associates, ultimately the chances are that Argentina will prevail.
If nothing else, the hearings made it clear that a decision to uphold Griesa, and to find in favor of Elliott, would have such enormous consequences, not only for Argentina but for the entire world of sovereign debt, that I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. (Where, interestingly, Antonin Scalia wrote one of the more important precedents for this case, in Argentine litigation dating back to 1992.)
One key precedent that the Second Circuit would set, were it to find in favor of Elliott, would be a significant weakening of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Sovereigns have sovereign immunity, and can basically do what they like, and all sovereign bondholders know this — but in order to uphold Griesa’s order, the New York court would essentially be constraining what Argentina can do with its own foreign exchange. Everybody in the court agreed that Argentina’s foreign reserves are immune from attachment, but if the order were upheld, then Argentina would find itself in one of two states. If it continued to pay existing bondholders who tendered into its bond exchange, it would have to pay holdout bondholders as well. Alternatively, if it continued to refuse to pay holdout bondholders, it would be barred from paying holders of the new bonds at the same time.
Under the FSIA — and the US government made this argument reasonably forcefully on Monday — it’s really hard to make the case that the US can or should force Argentina’s hand in either case: it can’t compel Argentina to pay holdout bondholders, and it can’t restrain Argentina from paying other bondholders. Which means that no matter what the pari passu clause means, the FSIA presents a formidable roadblock to Elliott Associates, and one which the Second Circuit is likely to be reluctant to dismantle. The way that one judge, Reena Raggi, put it, if Argentina was determined not to pay its holdouts, it could do anything it wanted with its money — even spend it on hookers and blow, if it wanted — except pay its other bondholders. And as Gelpern notes, the FSIA “does not provide for sliding scale immunities”.
What’s more, upholding Griesa’s decision would have significant waterfall effects: it would hit not only Argentina, but a lot of private-sector institutions in New York as well, not least Bank of New York, which is the trustee for Argentina’s new bondholders. Olson made it very clear that if the order was upheld, and Argentina kept on trying to pay its new bondholders while stiff-arming its holdouts, then Elliott would go after Bank of New York for “aiding and abetting” Argentina in flouting the order.
That would put Bank of New York in a very invidious position. On the one hand, it acts as a trustee for the new bondholders, and if it is given a coupon payment by Argentina, then that coupon payment belongs to the bondholders. BoNY has to pass the coupon payment on to them. On the other hand, if it does so, it might well be found in contempt of court. The Second Circuit is going to have to think long and hard about what exactly it would expect BoNY to do in such a situation — not least because that subsidiary case is very likely to come up in front of them if they find in favor of Elliott here.
Finding in favor of Argentina, then, is the easy way out, and as a result the appeals court is likely to hold its nose and find in favor of a defendant whom they really don’t like. That might explain why the justices were so hard on Argentina during oral argument: if they’re going to find in the country’s favor in their decision, they really ought to at least make the country’s lawyer squirm a bit in person. It’s — almost literally — the least they can do.
Comments
4 comments so far |
Circuit courts of appeal have judges, not justices.
Posted by AlanVanneman | Report as abusive
This matter is heavily influenced by foreign policy/relations, much more so, it seems, than the ordinary application of commercial law, as FS touches on. For other reasons than contract law, the US government wants Elliott to lose. I’d rather see the government buy the loan and forgive it, if that’s what it wants, than see the law so tortured to attain a desired outcome. (But that kind of thinking is passé, it appears.)
OBTW: The piece IMO overstates the dilemma of the bank. There is a procedure to handle competing claims to an asset in the hands of a custodian who asserts no claim. This is actually not unusual, FS. I mean, come on ….
Posted by MrRFox | Report as abusive
Oh man!!
Are You saying that bonds issued under US law don’t have protection?
Posted by LucaT | Report as abusive
I’ll second the thought of MrRFox’s last paragraph. I assume the answer here is that BoNY would hold the money as trustee until a court told it what to do.
FISA adds a layer of complexity to the issue for sovereigns, but this sort of issue arises all the time when a borrower defaults/goes into bankruptcy. Even if BoNY as trustee passes on the payments to bondholders, for a non-sovereign borrower there’s well-established bankruptcy law concerning the ability of the bankruptcy trustee to recover cash from creditors who received preferential payments and what constitutes a preferential payment. It can take some time and legal expenses to figure out, especially in the case of a company like MF Global with lots of activity and shoddy record-keeping. That said, other than the sovereign aspect, there’s nothing novel about U.S. courts working through how to deal with money leaving an entity when other creditors claim that those funds should be theirs.
Posted by realist50 | Report as abusive
 
 

Mittwoch, 25. Juli 2012

weitere Pressestimmen zu pari passu in NY court af appeals

La Nacion
A case in the U.S. gets complicated
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
By Martin Kanenguiser
A legal case that Argentine lost in a lower U.S. court got complicated in a hearing held yesterday in New York, over the strong criticism that two judges made toward the decision by the government to not pay all of the bondholders.
Sources connected to the case told LA NACION that the hearing in which the court of appeals had to listen to the position of the Economy Ministry, the litigating vulture funds and the US government turned out to be “tough” for Argentina’s attorneys.
"It was worse than expected and the chances grew that the government will lose,” they admitted.
The judges from the New York court have in their hands this case filed by the vulture funds Dart, Elliott and Aurelius; if they rule in favor of the plaintiffs, it would completely complicate the payment of bonds to creditors that accepted the swaps to exit the default in 2005 and 2010.
"Why would someone who can read lend money once to Argentina?” said one of the judges, Rosemary Pooler, reflecting the exhaustion of various judges for having to deal with the cases coming out of the Argentine default for more than 10 years.
Despite the litigants not accepting either of the two restructurings that Argentina held, they got Judge Thomas Griesa to rule in their favor in the lower court. The basis of that sentence is the wide application of the pari passu clause, which grants them similar rights and obligations as the bondholders that accepted the swaps.
"Your obligation is to treat them equally,” said her colleague, Reena Raggi, to Argentina’s attorney Jonathan Blackman, of the firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. The two judges and their colleague Barrington Parker let it be known that Argentina has not treated all of the creditors in a fair manner, while the government says that the vulture funds are only seeking to litigate.
The crux of the controversy is the “locked-shut law” which allowed the government to make the two aforementioned swaps but closed the possibility of moving ahead with subsequent negotiations with the “holdouts”.
A source from one of the investment banks that is negotiating Argentine bonds in the U.S. told LA NACION from New York that, before the end of the year, the court could hand down an “intermediate” decision.
"The greatest probability is that the court is inclined to refute a wide interpretation of the pari passu clause in favor of the creditors, but could find that the ‘locked-shut law’ operates in a discriminatory manner,” the source said.
A government source was more blunt: “If the judges make this swap collapse, all of those that could come forward in Europe will collapse and for that reason the Department of the Treasury, which is against many of the decisions we make, supported us through a brief of amicus curiae.”
On that, Blackman said before the judges that the upholding of Griesa’s ruling would be a “nuclear bomb.”
After the hearing, the ambassador to the United States, Jorge Arguello, said that the holdouts “made a bad deal” by falling out of the swaps, but admitted that their actions in the U.S. courts “complicated and set back the process of finalizing the restructuring agreement.”
Clarin
U.S. court decides if the vulture funds will have to be paid
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
By Ana Baron
For Judge Griesa, if the bondholders are honored that money will have to be shared with others.
The vulture funds argue that by not paying them, Argentina is discriminating against them. And the Argentine government argues that paying them in full on the bonds in default that they hold would itself be discriminating against the bondholders that entered the swap and accepted a haircut. Who is right? During the hearing held on Monday in New York, the Court of Appeals seemed inclined towards the vulture funds when they questioned if it was just that Argentina is paying some creditors and not others.
What is in play is a ruling by Judge Griesa who, on February 23, found that when the Argentine government pays installments to the bondholders that entered the swap of 2005 or 2010, the bondholders will have to share that payment with the vulture funds.
During the hearing on Monday, Argentina asked for this ruling to be overturned.
If the Court of Appeals does not reverse it, the two swaps held by the government could unravel. According to Griesa’s decision, those charged with splitting the money between the bondholders that entered the swap and the vulture funds will be the international banks that normally pay the maturities. And if, for example, Deutsche Bank refuses to divide the money with the vulture funds, they could be sued.
During the hearing on Monday, a three judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of New York questioned Argentina’s argument that it is not discriminating. “Your obligation is to give them all the same status,” said Judge Reena Raggi. According to her, “it’s difficult to say that by paying one group of bondholders and not others, you achieve that.”
Argentina’s attorney, Jonathan Blackman, explained that 92% of the bondholders have entered in the swaps and the fact that a debt is not being paid doesn’t mean that the funds that didn’t enter in the swap are being disadvantaged.
It all depends, in fact, on how the pari passu clause is interpreted, the clause included in the bond contracts in default in 2001 that states that all the bondholders should be treated equally. Griesa interpreted that clause to be equivalent to the so-called sharing clause, which states that all have to share in the payments that the government makes.
“Argentine bonds don’t have a sharing clause,” explained Adam Lerrick, an expert in debt restructuring from the American Enterprise Institute, to Clarin. But as Griesa thinks that pari passu and the sharing clause are the same, not only should all the bondholders be treated equally, but also if there is a payment it has to be shared.
Telam
Arguello: “The debt swap was positive for Argentina and for the bondholders”
By Melisa Cabo
The ambassador in the United States said "the debt swap was positive for Argentina and for the bondholders” at the same time pointing out that the vulture funds that rejected the swap offer in 2005 “lost the chance to make money.”
The ambassador also sais that "the restructured bonds showed a performance that was superior to debt bonds in dollars from emerging markets (70%) and the average gains from stocks around the world that was 24%” and that this even placed them above the yields from commodities.
Argüello made these statements in the eighth edition of the newsletter put out bi-weekly from the diplomatic headquarters in Washington and that on this occasion included an extensive technical report in its questions-and-answers section about the history, evolution and yields on restructured bonds from the 2005 swap.
In the research report that is presented “to the three branches of the U.S. government, we show how the creditors that entered the swap in 2005 and held their bonds and coupons attached to GDP received yields of around 90%.”
This shows that “the debt swap was positive for Argentina and for the bondholders,” the ambassador said.
In turn, the vulture funds “that rejected the Argentine offer of the debt swap in 2005 not only lost the chance to make money but add to that the millions that they have spent on lobbying and costly publicity campaigns directed at the failure of the swaps,” the diplomat said.
In this manner, the report called “Evaluation of the first restructuring offer of Argentine debt: It wasn’t a bad deal after all,” highlights “two innovative elements” that Argentina included in the restructuring process and that “have served as an example for the international financial community.”
On one side, there is "the ‘Most Favored Creditor Clause’ (MFC) which sought to reassure bondholders who agreed to undertake the exchange offer in the understanding that they would be protected in case Argentina gave more favorable terms to other creditors at a later date."
The second consisted of the inclusion of “a GDP-linked coupon or warrant proving that Argentina acted in good faith and was enthusiastic to share with creditors the benefits of an economic recovery.”
As a result, the final participation of the swap reached “an outstanding 76.1%” coming after “only 3 years after its default and way down the average registered in past restructuring processes (7.4 years), Argentina secured the best public debt restructuring in history.”
For its part, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley, “creditors who tendered their bonds in 2005 and held on to
the new securities (including the GDP-linked coupons) since then, have received returns of about 90 percent,” meaning that “the restructured securities have outpaced the 70 percent return on emerging-market dollar debt and
24 percent gain in global stocks.”
In this sense, taking into account the haircut achieved by Argentina, “the holders of Argentine bonds that entered the swap of 2005 have had an annual rate of return of more than 5%, a rate higher than international inflation,” the report from the embassy in the United States concluded.
The eighth edition of the newsletter also includes an article written by Justice Minister Julio Alak, who addresses the measures taken to combat money laundering and terrorism in Argentina.
Also, it contains an analysis of Jorge Arguello called “the vulture funds play dirty even in the Capitol” and wraps up with the showing of paintings called “United Colors of HIV” by Argentine artist Fabián Ríos Rubino, presented at the Argentine embassy since September and in parallel to the International AIDS Conference 2012 being held this week in Washington.
MercoPress
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Argentina asked a US federal appeals court to reverse lower-court rulings that could help creditors including Elliott Management Corp.’s NML Capital Fund collect on 1.4 billion dollars in defaulted bonds.
Argentina, which defaulted on 80 billion dollars in foreign debt in 2001, argued that US District Judge Thomas Griesa in Manhattan was wrong in holding that a provision in the bonds bars the Republic from paying bondholders who agreed to debt restructurings in 2005 and 2010 before it pays creditors who refused to take the deals.

Blackman said before the judges that the upholding of Griesa’s ruling would be a “nuclear bomb.” // nach La Nacion sieht es für uns recht gut aus in der Sache !!!

La Nacion
A case in the U.S. gets complicated
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
By Martin Kanenguiser
A legal case that Argentine lost in a lower U.S. court got complicated in a hearing held yesterday in New York, over the strong criticism that two judges made toward the decision by the government to not pay all of the bondholders.
Sources connected to the case told LA NACION that the hearing in which the court of appeals had to listen to the position of the Economy Ministry, the litigating vulture funds and the US government turned out to be “tough” for Argentina’s attorneys.
"It was worse than expected and the chances grew that the government will lose,” they admitted.
The judges from the New York court have in their hands this case filed by the vulture funds Dart, Elliott and Aurelius; if they rule in favor of the plaintiffs, it would completely complicate the payment of bonds to creditors that accepted the swaps to exit the default in 2005 and 2010.
"Why would someone who can read lend money once to Argentina?” said one of the judges, Rosemary Pooler, reflecting the exhaustion of various judges for having to deal with the cases coming out of the Argentine default for more than 10 years.
Despite the litigants not accepting either of the two restructurings that Argentina held, they got Judge Thomas Griesa to rule in their favor in the lower court. The basis of that sentence is the wide application of the pari passu clause, which grants them similar rights and obligations as the bondholders that accepted the swaps.
"Your obligation is to treat them equally,” said her colleague, Reena Raggi, to Argentina’s attorney Jonathan Blackman, of the firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. The two judges and their colleague Barrington Parker let it be known that Argentina has not treated all of the creditors in a fair manner, while the government says that the vulture funds are only seeking to litigate.
The crux of the controversy is the “locked-shut law” which allowed the government to make the two aforementioned swaps but closed the possibility of moving ahead with subsequent negotiations with the “holdouts”.
A source from one of the investment banks that is negotiating Argentine bonds in the U.S. told LA NACION from New York that, before the end of the year, the court could hand down an “intermediate” decision.
"The greatest probability is that the court is inclined to refute a wide interpretation of the pari passu clause in favor of the creditors, but could find that the ‘locked-shut law’ operates in a discriminatory manner,” the source said.
A government source was more blunt: “If the judges make this swap collapse, all of those that could come forward in Europe will collapse and for that reason the Department of the Treasury, which is against many of the decisions we make, supported us through a brief of amicus curiae.”
On that, Blackman said before the judges that the upholding of Griesa’s ruling would be a “nuclear bomb.”
After the hearing, the ambassador to the United States, Jorge Arguello, said that the holdouts “made a bad deal” by falling out of the swaps, but admitted that their actions in the U.S. courts “complicated and set back the process of finalizing the restructuring agreement.”

Dienstag, 24. Juli 2012

Anna Gelpern // Earlier she practiced with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York and London.

Anna Gelpern

Professor of Law

Office: Room 352
Phone: 202-274-4407
E-mail: vCard

Photograph of Professor Anna Gelpern
Professor Gelpern’s research explores the legal and policy implications of international capital flows. She has published articles on financial integration, government debt, and regulation of financial institutions in law and social science journals, and has co-authored a textbook on International Finance with Professor Hal S. Scott. She has contributed to international initiatives on financial reform and sovereign borrowing, most recently as part of the Second Warwick Commission and as an expert for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Professor Gelpern is a visiting fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics and a fellow at the George Washington University School of Law Center for Law, Economics & Finance; she held a visiting appointment at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Spring 2011.
Before joining the WCL faculty, she was an Associate Professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and Rutgers University Division of Global Affairs. She was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2002-2003. Between 1996 and 2002, Professor Gelpern served in legal and policy positions at the U.S. Treasury Department. Earlier she practiced with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York and London. Professor Gelpern has taught International Finance, Contracts, Commercial Law, Financial Institutions and International Law, and currently serves as Chair of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services Section of the Association of American Law Schools. She earned an A.B. from Princeton University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Argentina, Elliott Renew Battle Over Defaulted Debt

Argentina, Elliott Renew Battle Over Defaulted Debt

Jul 24 2012 | 11:44am ET
Rebuffed last month by the Supreme Court, Elliott Associates took its decade-long battle with Argentina back to the lower courts yesterday.
The South American company and the New York hedge fund sparred before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan yesterday, the latter to protect a ruling that could be worth more than $1 billion, and the former to have that ruling junked. At issue is the so-called pari passu clause in the $80 billion in debt Argentina defaulted on in 2001, which provides that the country's obligations to pay those bonds "shall at all times rank at least equally with all of its other present and future unsecured and unsubordinated external indebtedness."
The only problem, Elliott argues, is that it hasn't been treated as such: Argentina is paying off bonds it issued later, as part of debt exchanges for the defaulted bonds, but it isn't paying on the defaulted bonds.
"We're entitled to equal treatment," Ted Olson, who represents Elliott's NML Capital, told the court. "We're not getting equal treatment."
Elliott and NML won that argument before a lower court. But that ruling on a "boilerplate clause is a nuclear weapon that gives them the right to veto a sovereign debt restructuring," Argentina's lawyer argued. And as with the Supreme Court case, the U.S. government is siding with Argentina, arguing that U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa's ruling "could enable a single creditor to thwart the implementation of an internationally-supported restructuring plan, and thereby undermine the decades of effort the United States has expended to encourage a system of cooperative resolution of sovereign debt crises."
Argentina's lawyer, Jonathan Blackman, was more pointed: "Ninety-two percent of the debt holders recognized that the sensible thing to do was to take a haircut," he told the court. And, he added, even if Argentina were to lose the case, it couldn't pay anyway, since the precedent would cover more than the $1.4 billion sought by NML.
"Argentina cannot take 15% to 20% of its reserves to pay holdouts," Blackman said.
Olson said the $20 billion figure Blackman threw out was "new to me;" NML argued in its brief with the appeals court that Argentina, "a G-20 nation with more than $46 billion in unrestricted reserves, has ample resources to pay those 'nonperforming' obligations just as it now pays other obligations."

http://www.finalternatives.com/node/21121

New judicial battle over the default // Presseschau

La Nacion
New judicial battle over the default
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
By Silvia Pisani
The vulture funds ask for equal treatment for those who entered into the two swaps; there is no date for the verdict
Yesterday the government had a new round in the battle waged with the so-called “vulture funds”, who are asking for “equal treatment” as those who accepted the two debt swaps that they rejected. “The Argentines found substantially more difficulties than the ones they expected,” it was said to LA NACION. What happened yesterday at the Court of Appeals in New York was a “technical” hearing in which both parties made their arguments without a verdict being reached. “There is no determined deadline for that, yet,” it was said.
The hearing responded to an appeal by Argentina on a ruling handed down last February by New York Judge Thomas Griesa in favor of the funds EM and NML. In that round, Griesa sided with the bondholders collecting interest “under equal conditions” as those that did accept the two debt swaps that the government offered and that the so-called “vulture funds” rejected.
The issue became pending upon Argentina’s request for an appeal. In the midst of this there were pronouncements both in favor of our country as well as indicators against it. In favor, Minister Hernan Lorenzino celebrated a statement from the government of Barack Obama that “discouraged” the Court of Appeals from following the path indicated by Griesa. Argentina “must normalize” relations with its creditors, but to follow the course indicated by Griesa could mean “tensions” in “our international relations” said, last April, an amicus curiae brief from the Department of Justice.
With that brief as an umbrella, the Argentine legal team appeared at the New York court to argue in favor of reviewing the measure.
Sources familiar with the case told LA NACION that one of the “surprises” of the hearing was the criteria set out by one of the members of the court in the direction of backing Griesa. “There was no verdict yet, but the impression is that it’s costing the Department of Justice a bit to make its political criteria understood,” was the argument.
Consulted by LA NACION, none of the parties involved made formal comments about what happened.
The bondholders demand that they be paid interest, despite that they did not accept the debt swaps, and without that being an obstacle to their other court cases against Argentina.
The Argentine team argued that to give in to the demand from the funds EM and NML it would be no less than “dynamiting” international agreements on debt renegotiation. “To accede to something like that would be immensely complicated for other debt renegotiation operations that are in course and that depend a great deal on them, like is the case with Spain or Greece,” the ambassador in Washington, Jorge Arguello, gave as examples.
For the plaintiffs, that is to use “the strategy of fear”. The onslaught continues with the aggravating circumstance for Argentina that, days ago, the bondholders won a ruling in their favor in that they can attach state assets in the hands of Banco Hipotecario totaling US$23 million. “What happened yesterday in the New York courts shows that Argentina still has a long way to go to be a trustworthy country for the financial markets. It would be better if it sat down once and for all to negotiate in good faith,” said Mark Botsford, one of the main individual debt holders who, as such, was not part of the process yesterday.
El Cronista
Debt: seeking to reverse judgment in U.S.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
There was a hearing yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan between lawyers for the Argentine government and the representatives of the vulture funds. The firm defending Argentina (Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton) – through their attorney Jonathan Blackman- tried to refute over the course of four hours the request for “pari passu” made by NML (property of Elliott) for which a demand is made that the holders of bonds in default have the same treatment as those who entered the debt swap. That is to say, that they also be paid coupons and interest periodically.
The creditors already have a sentence in their favor by the lower court judge, Thomas Griesa, but Argentina’s yesterday was based on the risks that would come if pari passu was backed, since it would generate few incentives for creditors to enter future sovereign or corporate debt restructurings in any country. It’s for that reason that, in addition to the attorneys for Argentina and those for the creditors, representatives of the government of the United States also appeared, supporting Argentina’s position. Not because they are “sympathetic” to the country’s strategy, but because it could affect later debt restructurings.
Argentina’s lawyers argued that the debt swap (started in 2005 and with various re-openings) finally achieved an adhesion of 92% of all the creditors. But to “oblige” the country to also pay the creditors that didn’t accept the proposal could put at risk the honoring of the debt with all the rest.
Once the parties’ arguments were heard, now the Court of Appeals will have to issue a verdict in the coming months.
Clarin
Argentina asks US court to revoke a ruling by Griesa
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Asks a federal appeals court to revoke rulings by a lower court and impede creditors like Elliott Management to be able to collect US$1.4 billion on bonds in default since 2001.
Argentina asked a federal appeals court to revoke rulings from a lower court and impede creditors like Elliott Management Corp.- NML Capital to be able to collect US$1.4 billion on bonds that fell into default in 2001.
Argentina appealed a ruling handed down by Judge Thomas Griesa of New York in Manhattan that according to the country’s attorneys would allow the creditors who refused to take the swap offers on debt restructuring in 2005 and 2010 to collect, according to international new agencies.
Buenos Aires alleges that the upholding of Griesa’s sentences could undermine debt agreements and set off a new financial crisis in the Republic. Griesa agreed with the interpretation of the NML fund and other investors under the “pari passu” clause.
The investment fund argued that “Argentina, a country with more than US$46 billion in freely available reserves, has the resources to pay those obligations in default in the same way that it pays its other obligations now. It simply refuses to do so, despite years of litigation and the issuing of various rulings against it.”
Argentina argued that “it’s not equal treatment for the holders of bonds in default to be paid complete interest, without a discount and the principal of the debt in default, because the other bondholders that accepted the debt with big discounts through swap offers are receiving a single payment referred to in their payment of restructured interest.”
The application of the pari passu clause allows for only one creditor to obtain collection on the owed amoutn outside the global arrangement that a contry has arrived at after falling into insolvency, without attending to the terms of the agreement. For Griesa, that allows for paying all the creditors equally.
Reuters
Monday, July 23, 2012
By Jonathan Stempel
Argentina's failure to repay bondholders who refused to take part in massive debt restructurings generated strong skepticism on Monday from a U.S. appeals court in New York, which questioned whether it was fair to let the country pay off some creditors but not others.
The outcome of the case, which stems from Argentina's roughly $100 billion default in 2002, could affect how easily countries might fend off angry creditors in bids to extricate themselves from sovereign debt crises.
Bloomberg
Monday, July 23, 2012
By Bob Van Voris and Drew Benson
Argentina asked a federal appeals court to reverse lower-court rulings that could help creditors including Elliott Management Corp.’s NML Capital Fund collect on $1.4 billion in defaulted bonds.
Argentina, which defaulted on $80 billion in foreign debt in 2001, argued today that U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa in Manhattan was wrong in holding that a provision in the bonds bars the republic from paying bondholders who agreed to debt restructurings in 2005 and 2010 before it pays creditors who refused to take the deals.
El Cronista
The latest flappings of the vulture funds
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
By Jorge Arguello
Days ago, the Members of the U.S. Congress read in the specialized newspapers with the biggest circulation in the country a full page ad from American Task Force Argentina (AFTA) that – centered on me personally – tried to deform, for the umpteenth time, the successful foreign debt renegotiation of our country after the 2001 default.
AFTA is the lobby facade that the vulture funds like NML and EM Ltd. have put up in Washington, and they’ve been shaken with their latest flappings by the proof of the failure of their strategy to exclude themselves from the debt restructurings of 2005 and 2010, chasing millions made from pennies feeding off the worst of the crisis.
And now they are more nervous than ever because a strong information campaign that was not expected from Argentina among the same U.S. senators and congressman that they were accustomed to distributing their lies to put in evidence not only the spuriousness of their interests, but something worse: that they lie, and they lie fully.
The ad, published in The Hill and Politico, contains the same old litany of distortions about Argentina’s behavior iwth its creditors in that it maliciously involves public comments from the presidents of both countries that are partial, out of context and mixing – like the tango – the Bible and the water heater.*
The strategy to undermine Argentina’s image has origins which condemn it. It’s implemented by ATFA’s mentor, Robert Shapiro, an ex-official of Bill Clinton’s who already has forgotten the allergy of his own ex-president for the vulture funds that approached the Democrats to donate money to them.
If Paul Singer, of the NML Fund, today manages billions of dollars in financial investments it’s because his cunning bested the rest of the speculators and after making fortunes in time he jumped to “derivative” financial products that provoked the great 2008 crisis in the United States. Kenneth Dart (EM Ltd) set his residence in the Cayman Islands to evade some US$200 million in US taxes and became a citizen of Belize, trying to re-enter the United States, this time as the consul of that country and under diplomatic immunity.
The true faces of ATFA settle in tax havens, clearly showing how these “risk investors” laugh in the face of US taxpayers to the point of renouncing their citizenship to obtain fiscal benefits.
In the latest months, the newsletters that the Argentine embassy in Washington began to distribute periodically among the 535 members of the U.S. Congress and the top authorities of the Obama administration, plus the illustrative book “Myths and Realities” about the default of 2001, put together by our government, assured ample access to the truth about the restructuring and the payment of the debt and made the interests in play clear.
On one side are the vulture funds fattened at the expense of grabbing debt bonds for almost nothing from economies in turmoil like ours in that crisis or those going through serious financial economic crises, preferably now in Africa and Latin America.
On the other, Argentina, who restructured 92% of its debt in two stages (2005 and 2010), in a process after which demands persist for US$3.5 billoin – nominal, not real! – and of them only 8% are Americans, a fact that in Washington showed the truly mobile lobby of the vulture funds.
Still, faced with the persistent demands of a few bondholders, Argentina is cooperating judicially, all the while arguing its position in terms of fairness and non-discrimination from the creditors, supported by international law. As such, the vulture funds wouldn’t have any chance if countries agreed on an internationally accepted instrument of resolving sovereign debt.
So far, since 2001, various countries included clauses on class actions and jurisdictions to emit debt. But the vulture funds insist on picking on these legal cracks with less and less luck. Their latest defeat was a short time ago, at the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear an appeal on collecting US$100 million from the Argentine Central Bank deposited in the Federal Reserve of New York.
To confront these vulture funds seems relatively simple: expose the truth about what Argentina did with its economy and its debt during the last decade, even associating the payment of creditors with the notable growth of its GDP. And to expose how these funds made their money and their tricks to repeat their maneuvers with Argentina.
It’s certain, they’re vultures. And one can only expect more and more feasting from them. Being this way, they will only get from Argentina more truth on the table and greater political strength to end once and for all with the flight under which they launched an era of global speculation that continues to pile up its bills and from which the Argentine people took a painful lesson which gives us authority few have.
[*NOTE: the phrase “mixing the Bible and the water heater” is an old Argentine literary expression meant to say something was a mix of the important and the mundane, in orde to be pretentious.]