postings by Mark Weidemaier

Do Investors Really Prefer Putin’s Booby Trapped Bonds?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We have written before about the “Alternative Payment Currency” clause in some Russian bonds, the one that allows for payment in rubles if, for “reasons beyond its control,” the government can’t pay in dollars or euros (or a subset of alternative currencies). Our general take on the clause was that it is a bit odious. That’s because we viewed it as way for investors to subsidize bad behavior by the Russian government. If the Russian government gets sanctioned, investors will help it out by taking on the currency risk associated with being paid in rubles. And we were not the only ones. Jonathan Wheatley of the FT, writing in 2018, when these clauses were introduced, quoted an investor this way:

“I cannot understand why any foreigner would take the risk of being paid out in roubles,” said one London-based asset manager, adding that many foreigners were likely to buy the bonds without reading the prospectus thoroughly.

Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas producing giant, also began using these ruble option clauses in its foreign currency bonds at roughly the same time (here). Importantly, for our purposes, it was clear to all involved at the outset that these clauses were put in place in anticipation of western sanctions in the event that Russia were to engage in misbehavior (e.g., invading neighbors).

From first principles, we would have assumed a bond with this APC clause would be viewed as relatively unattractive compared to a bond that required payment in dollars or euros. Bonds denominated in foreign currency protect investors from the risk of devaluation in the borrower’s currency. If investors are less willing to lend in domestic currency, that should make the cost of borrowing in foreign currency lower. If one looks at broad trends over time, that’s mostly what we see. Poorer and lower-rated countries do seem to pay more to borrow in local currency than in foreign currency (here). By contrast, rich, highly-rated sovereign issuers borrow pretty much only in their local currency.

Moreover, the APC clause could be invoked opportunistically by the Russian government in circumstances where it isn’t actually impossible to pay investors in hard currency. That risk is probably small for a country with a long-standing reputation for good behavior vis-à-vis its obligations to the rest of the world such as the Netherlands or Germany.  But would anyone put Russia in that category, especially Russia under Putin after its repeated and extreme violations of international obligations? A clause that allows misbehavior by a counterparty known for its willingness to misbehave should make these bonds less valuable. Indeed, we’ve seen just that with Argentina after it engages in shenanigans vis-à-vis bondholders (here).

Given these principles, here is what we would have predicted:

Continue reading "Do Investors Really Prefer Putin’s Booby Trapped Bonds?" »

That Odd Sri Lankan Airline Guaranteed Bond

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu Gulati & Mark Weidemaier

After months of waffling, Sri Lanka’s head-in-sand government has finally acknowledged that it cannot pay its debts. The cavalry (IMF) has been called in and we guess that hordes of potential restructuring advisers are flying to Colombo to offer their services. Assuming they have done their homework, their proposals surely will consider both the government’s own debt and a Sri Lankan airline bond that the government has guaranteed.

Sri Lankan airlines used to be profitable. From 1998-2008, it was partially owned and run by Emirates. One of us recalls it being a special treat to fly on. But the government decided in 2008 to run the airline itself and, since then, it has performed terribly.  There have been corruption scandals, accusations that Emirates was pushed out after the airline refused to bump paying passengers to make room for the royal family, and reports that local banks have been strong-armed into lending and will be in trouble if the airline collapses. Perhaps it’s no surprise that it needed a government guarantee to borrow money.

Sovereign guaranteed bonds often carry a higher coupon than a bond issued by the sovereign, perhaps because the sovereign is viewed as the safest credit. But this logic seems upside down. Unlike a pure sovereign bond, a guaranteed corporate bond is backed both by the sovereign’s credit and by a separate pool of assets (e.g., airplanes). Even if the company is literally worthless, there is still the full sovereign guarantee. Obviously there will be other factors that affect price, such as liquidity (the market for pure sovereign bonds may be much larger). But in crisis, when the bonds are sure to be restructured, there seems every reason to favor the guaranteed bond.

Another reason to favor a guaranteed bond is that these often have less effective restructuring mechanisms than are found in the sovereign’s own bonds. Oddly, then, a guaranteed bond that was viewed as riskier at issuance can end up being a safer bet. Greece’s 2012 restructuring imposed haircuts of over 50% on pure sovereign bonds but most holders of guaranteed bonds got paid in full. There is even some evidence suggesting that investors had figured this out towards the end game in Greece and favored guaranteed bonds. 

Here are some of the provisions in the airline guaranteed bond that could cause Sri Lanka’s restructuring advisors a giant headache.

Continue reading "That Odd Sri Lankan Airline Guaranteed Bond" »

How to Destroy the Collective Action Clause

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

We almost hate to post this, because it is so simple, and so fundamental, that it seems almost surely wrong. But if it’s wrong, we can’t see why. Maybe a reader can explain? Here goes.

For at least 20 years, reform efforts in sovereign debt markets have promoted collective action clauses (CACs) (here and here). The current version of the clause was drafted by a super-committee of senior lawyers, investors, and finance ministers – many of them people for whom we have enormous respect. It lets the sovereign bond issuer hold a restructuring vote across multiple series of bonds in a so-called aggregated vote. Before, most CACs in the market required a vote for each series of bonds. The point of the reform was to make it impossible for litigious holdouts to exclude one or more individual series of bonds from a restructuring that had garnered the support of a creditor supermajority. But—and here’s the important point—outside of the euro area, these aggregated CACs are reserved for bonds issued under foreign law. They don’t have to be. But contract reform to solve the holdout problem hasn’t seemed important for bonds governed by local law, which the sovereign can already restructure just by changing its law.

Most sovereigns issue most debt under local law. So, here’s the CAC destroying idea:

Phase 1, the sovereign restructures its local law debt (either by passing legislation or by asking bondholders to tender). The restructured bonds might or might not include new financial terms. What they definitely will now include is a modification provision substantially similar to the one that appears in its foreign law debt. However, the restructured bonds are still governed by local law.

Phase 2, the sovereign proposes a restructuring of the entire debt stock, aggregating the vote of local and foreign law bonds together.

Continue reading "How to Destroy the Collective Action Clause" »

Odd Lots Podcast: The Narrowly-Avoided Russian Debt Default

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu and I have posted a few times (here, here, and here) about some of the odd features in Russia's bond contracts. Perhaps the weirdest (and most odious) is the Alternative Payment Currency Event clause, in which investors effectively insure the Russian government against the risk of future sanctions. Anyway, we had a chance to discuss these clauses, and the general complications of a potential Russian default, with Bloomberg's Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal on their fabulous Odd Lots podcast:

There’s a big question over whether Russia will be able (or willing) to make payments on billions of dollars it’s borrowed from investors given its current situation. Not only does the country have a history of previous major defaults, but some of its outstanding bonds are also structured kind of strangely. On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with University of Virginia law professor Mitu Gulati and University of North Carolina's Mark Weidemaier. They describe how odd some Russian bonds are and what might happen after default.

Should Investors Who Care About ESG Buy Russian Sovereign Bonds?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

Umm... no?

We can think of two models of ESG investing. (At Bloomberg, Matt Levine has a more sophisticated take; also here.) One is normative, simple, and apparently held by very few investors. It goes something like, don’t invest in “bad” activities or borrowers. A second model, apparently more common, is that investors rely on ESG metrics to inform them about potential risks and economic implications of a borrower’s ESG-related practices. As Sustainalytics puts it, “Material ESG issues (MEIs) are business issues related to environmental, social, and governance factors that may have a measurable impact on financial performance.” We confess that we don’t really understand this second model, or how it differs from an investment approach that puts risk-adjusted returns above all else. But it seems to make people feel good.

Anyway, you probably were not wondering about the link between Russian sovereign debt and ESG investing. Neither were we, because, well, why would anyone wonder about that? It seems obvious that investors buy Russian sovereign debt specifically because they do not care about ESG goals, at least for purposes of that investment. The ESG part of the investor’s brain is off doing something else while the part that chases yield buys Russian bonds. But most investors claim to care about ESG goals. And some people seem to be wondering what it means that investors who make this claim sometimes hold Russian bonds too. One way to understand this fact is to posit a flaw in ESG metrics. As the Financial Times summarizes one expert in sustainable finance, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the failings of asset managers and data analytics firms in their assessment of environmental, social and governance risks.” An implication is that “ESG data firms need to look at [the war in Ukraine] and ask themselves what they have missed.”

Another way to put the problem is to say that what ESG data firms have missed is that investors do not care about ESG. Yet a third way to put it is to say that investors cannot be bothered to read contracts, so you can get them to agree to the most outrageous things if you just have the chutzpah to write it down and hope they don't notice. The Russian sovereign bonds nicely illustrate both of these latter possibilities.

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The Alternative Payment Currency Event Clause in Russian Sovereign Bonds

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

A clause in recent Russian dollar and euro currency bonds – presumably written in anticipation of the possibility of sanctions from the US or the European Union -- allows payments to be made in a currency other than Euros and US dollars under certain conditions. Russia’s 2019 bond issuances in US dollars and Euros says, for example, that the Russian Federation may, under conditions “beyond its control”, make payments in an “alternative payment currency."

“Alternative payment currency” in the US dollar issuance is defined as “Euros, Pound sterling or Swiss francs or, if for reasons beyond its control the Russian Federation is unable to make payments of principal or interest (in whole or in part) in respect of the Bonds in any of these currencies, Russian roubles."

What's unclear is what makes a reason “beyond the control” of the Russian Federation in case it finds itself "unable to pay" in the specified currency. Presumably the fact that Vladimir Putin has forbidden something does not make it beyond the control of the government; he can choose not to forbid it. But could Russia plausibly argue that it is unable to pay because of western sanctions, and these are beyond its control?

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Are Russian Sovereign Bonds Now Worthless?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

That is the question Mitu and I discuss in the latest Clauses and Controversies episode. We were prompted by a Bloomberg story quoting Jay Newman (formerly of Elliott Associates), who expects Russia to default and points out that its international bonds lack waivers of sovereign immunity. But this doesn't mean investors can't sue. To the contrary, investors probably can convince courts in New York and other places to accept jurisdiction and enter favorable judgments. It won't be quite as easy as in cases where the bond includes a waiver of jurisdictional immunity and related provisions, such as appointing an agent for service of process, that ease the path to the courthouse. But it's certainly do-able.

The harder problem is finding attachable assets. Having a waiver of the sovereign's immunity from attachment and execution makes things much easier, but it's possible to attach assets even without a waiver, and especially so when the foreign state lacks the support of the U.S. and most other governments.

It turns out that Russia's international bonds have all kinds of interesting clauses. Some are very investor-friendly, including a super-broad pari passu clause. Some aren't investor-friendly at all, such as a very short, three year prescription clause. And others are just weird, including a clause in a subset of bonds that potentially allows the Russian government to pay in roubles. We discuss all of these in the podcast.

Maybe investors won't line up to sue the Russian government. But if ever there was an opportunity for distressed debt funds to be on the side of the angels, this is it. So perhaps this will be the assignment we give students in our sovereign debt classes to work on for the rest of the semester:

Your client is Rick Blaine, manager of the New York based hedge fund Ilsa Capital.

A few things you should know about Rick.

He is rumored to have run guns for the anti-Franco side in the Spanish Civil War.  He never drinks Vichy mineral water. And he hates thugs of all types and nationalities.

Ilsa Capital owns positions in each of the Russian Federation foreign currency/ foreign law bonds that are outstanding as of March 1, 2022. 

Rick wants to join the fight in the Ukraine but his employees have persuaded him that he can do more for the cause by increasing the financial pressure on Mr. Putin. For this he needs your counsel.

Rick assumes that the Russian Federation, in light of the painful financial sanctions being imposed on it by the EU and USA, will stop paying interest on all of its US dollar and euro-denominated bonds.

His question to you is simple — “once they default, what can we do to cause trouble?” Rick is very popular in the hedge fund industry and has assured you that once you design a strategy, Rick is more than happy (in his words) to round up the usual suspects.

Rick does not like to read lengthy documents from lawyers. Hence, please keep your memorandum to under ten pages (double spaced).

Clauses and Controveries: From Commercial Bank Loans to Blue Bonds

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

After a short hiatus (we like to say we are between seasons), the Clauses and Controversies podcast has resumed. This week's episode, From Commercial Bank Loans to Blue Bonds, features Antonia Stolper from Shearman & Sterling:

Sovereign debt markets have evolved significantly over the years, from syndicated bank loans, to bonds, to the current infatuation with ESG lending. Antonia Stolper (Shearman & Sterling) joins us to talk about the evolution of sovereign debt practice over the course of her eminent career. We also talk about Belize's recent debt restructuring, where some say creditors agreed to significant additional reductions in exchange for promises by Belize to invest the savings in environmental conservation projects. Antonia helps us understand what actually happened in this deal and what its implications might be for future sovereign restructurings.

More on Belize: Marine Conservation is Nice; Deeper Haircuts Are Better

posted by Mark Weidemaier

A couple of additional thoughts on Belize’s debt workout, especially the relatively novel aspect involving the pre-funding of a marine conservation trust. The deal has featured prominently in the financial press lately, with great coverage in the FT (here by Robin Wigglesworth and here by Tommy Stubbington), Bloomberg (here), and elsewhere. For details, see Mitu’s posts here and here. Mitu has a relatively optimistic take, which I’m mostly on board with. It would be wonderful if countries could both ease debt burdens and increase investment in marine conservation and other forms of sustainable growth. It would be even more wonderful if investors paid for some of this by granting significant debt relief. But even if that’s what happened with Belize—and I’m not entirely sure that it is—the Belize deal may not be replicable at a scale that would matter.

The plan is for Belize to repurchase and retire its outstanding international bond. Reports suggest that negotiations over the repurchase price were stalled at around 60 cents on the dollar. Ultimately, investors agreed to take 55. In return for that concession, Belize will prefund a $23.4 million trust to support future marine conservation projects. One potential takeaway is that investors agreed to the additional 5 cent reduction after being presented with the debt-for-nature idea, perhaps in part because intense media coverage created pressure to demonstrate their ESG bona fides.

The first point to note here is that the additional 5 cents per dollar is very large in comparison to the concessions investors seem willing to make to achieve ESG goals in other contexts.

Continue reading "More on Belize: Marine Conservation is Nice; Deeper Haircuts Are Better" »

Might PBA Creditors Take a Lesson From the Black Widow?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We’ve had lots of interesting responses to our earlier post on debt restructuring shenanigans engaged in by the Province of Buenos Aires. Many on the creditor side are miffed. Two issues raised by these responses seemed worth another post. So here we go.

Why not use the Black Widow Strategy?

At first, we didn’t understand the reference. But Google helped. Black Widow is the new Marvel movie starring Scarlett Johansson, who is suing Disney because it, and its subsidiary Marvel, did not do an exclusive release of the movie in theaters before selling it on the new Disney Plus streaming service (here). Instead of suing Marvel for breach of contract, she is suing Disney for tortious interference with contract. This is a standard move for parties bound, like Ms. Johansson, by an arbitration clause they would prefer to avoid. By suing a related third party, they get to proceed in court—unless the third party can argue that it is a third party beneficiary or otherwise entitled to invoke the arbitration agreement.

Why mention tortious interference in the context of the Province of Buenos Aires’ recent exchange offer? Tortious interference is an old common law tort action. It is typically brought against a non-party who induces one of the contracting parties to breach. Since it is a tort, one has to show causality and, in some circumstances, also that the non-party not only interfered but did so with some improper motive or by some improper method. (And defining what counts as improper has proven difficult). A senior lawyer who hated Ecuador’s original exit exchange in 2000 once commented that he was inclined to organize a tortious interference action and believed he would win. The logic then and now is that, by inducing participating creditors to vote to impair the rights under the contract they are exiting, the issuer is inducing a breach of that contract.

But we are less confident that tortious interference is a helpful way of thinking about behavior like PBA’s.

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Why Are Creditors OK With The Province of Buenos Aires’ Dodgy Use of Exit Amendments?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu Gulati and Mark Weidemaier

For the most part, the financial press has not scrutinized the details of the ongoing restructuring by the Province of Buenos Aires (PBA), which is nearing completion. The details are worth considering. Some aspects of the exchange offer might have crossed the line between good and bad faith and might have been subject to legal challenge. But this turns out be an uncertain area of law.

The basic transaction is structured as an exit exchange, and this technique raises some legal uncertainties even if we ignore the dodgy particulars of PBA’s restructuring. A debtor in financial distress needs to negotiate a debt reduction with its creditors. The debt contracts allow creditors to consent to reduce the amounts owed them, but only on condition that a majority or supermajority vote in favor. Let’s say, hypothetically, this requires the support of 90% of creditors. And let us say that the debtor has managed to persuade only 60% of creditors to support its restructuring proposal. So the debtor would seem to be out of luck.

Enter the exit exchange.

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(Why) Are ESG Sovereign Bonds (Such) Scams?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is all the rage, with heaps of money pouring into sovereign and corporate bonds intended to finance efforts to meet climate-related goals and other worthwhile objectives. We have been skeptical of these commitments for some time, mostly because we aren’t persuaded investors care about much other than yield. And in fact, yields on ESG bonds seem to be a bit—but only a bit!—lower than yields on non-ESG bonds (the so-called “greenium”). As Matt Levine pointed out a couple of days ago, it’s not obvious how socially responsible investing will affect investors’ returns. But we are a little bit suspicious of the market for sovereign ESG bonds.

In part, we’re suspicious for the usual reasons. The basic transaction structure is that the bond issuer says it will use the proceeds for some beneficial environmental or social purpose. But the commitments are often defined so vaguely that it is hard to verify compliance. This is a pretty standard complaint, and a lot of smart people are thinking about how to define “green” investments and develop verification tools. But we’re suspicious for a more fundamental reason: The contracts are absolute b.s. Many issuers don’t commit to anything at all, or so the documentation suggests.

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The Haitian Independence Debt

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

The Haitian Independence Debt of 1825 is perhaps the most odious in the history of sovereign debt. France agreed to grant recognition to the Haitian state in exchange for a massive indemnity payment, ostensibly intended to compensate French plantation owners for losses suffered during Haitian revolution. With French gunboats lurking in port and offshore, the French imposed a massive and unpayable debt burden equal to roughly 5 times the annual French budget.

Surprisingly, the literature on odious debt pays fairly little attention to this episode. Perhaps this because the doctrine of odious debt was developed with a view towards borrowing by a despot who is subsequently overthrown. Must the populace repay money borrowed to oppress it? Thus, when Haiti does show up in the odious debt literature, the question typically involves debts incurred by the despotic Duvalier regimes. The Independence Debt, by contrast was incurred in the context of a colony escaping the control of an imperial power, and the modern odious debt literature generally ignores this context. We discuss this in a recent Clauses and Controversies podcast with the wonderful Gregoire Mallard, that should be out soon.

This semester, we asked students in our international debt class what they would say if either the French or the Haitian governments came to them today, asking for advice on whether Haiti had a viable legal claim arising from these 1825 events.

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SDNY Upholds Pledge of Collateral for PDVSA 2020s

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Today, Judge Failla of the Southern District of New York issued an opinion rejecting PDVSA's request for a declaration invalidating the PDVSA 2020 bonds. These bonds, which we've written about before (e.g., here, here and, here) are backed by a pledge of 50.1% of the equity in Citgo Holding. The argument for invalidating the bonds contends that the 2016 exchange offer and collateral pledge was a contract in the "national public interest," which, under Venezuelan law, required but did not receive the approval of the National Assembly. PDVSA argued, first, that under the act of state doctrine, the court had to defer to a series of National Assembly resolutions declaring the exchange offer invalid. It also argued that Venezuelan law governed disputes over the validity of the contract, even though the governing law clause in the bonds specified New York law.

The district judge rejected these arguments in a lengthy and thoughtful opinion. (There is one clear but fairly tangential mistake, when the opinion implies on p. 59 that PDVSA is neither a "foreign state" nor an agency or instrumentality of a foreign state for purposes of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.*) On the governing law question, the judge ultimately decided that New York law applied because--to oversimplify a bit--New York had a significant connection to the transaction. The bonds were negotiated and paid in New York, etc. For more on this conflict of laws issue, see here.

I'd expect to see an appeal, although whether that will benefit PDVSA (even if just by giving it more time) will probably depend on whether the district judge or court of appeals issues a stay of the current order. [edit: And of course on further developments in the U.S. sanctions regime.]

*Technically, the court said only that neither party argued that PDVSA was such an entity. The court made this point to help it distinguish FSIA cases that supported PDVSA's position. But this is no distinction at all. It is beyond dispute that PDVSA is an agency or instrumentality of Venezuela (or is indistinguishable from the government if treated as its alter ego). In either case, the FSIA unquestionably applies to PDVSA, so it is not obvious why cases under the FSIA would be irrelevant to the dispute.

The Sideshow about Venezuela's Prescription Clause

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We’ve written before about the perplexing prescription clause that appears (in one form or another) in Venezuela’s bonds. A common version of the clause says something like this:

Claims in respect of principal and interest will become void unless presentation for payment is made within a period of ten years in the case of principal and three years in the case of interest from the Relevant Date, to the extent permitted by applicable law.  “Relevant Date” means whichever is the later of (i) the date on which any such payment first becomes due and (ii) if the full amount payable has not been received by the Fiscal Agent on or prior to such due date, the date on which, the full amount having been so received, notice to that effect shall have been given to the Bondholders.

The clause is weird. Because Venezuela’s default in the payment of interest is now approaching its 3-year anniversary for some bonds, some investors worry that, unless they file suit, claims to recover those missed payments will become void. Seeking to reassure them, the interim government has released a statement saying not to worry. In the interim government’s view, the clause “addresses situations where the Fiscal Agent holds amounts paid by the Republic that are unclaimed by, or otherwise not distributed to, bondholders.” The statement asserts that the prescription period has not started to run because the fiscal agent hasn’t yet received the funds.

Continue reading "The Sideshow about Venezuela's Prescription Clause " »

Episode Two of Clauses and Controversies: Imperial Chinese Bonds

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

To prepare for later discussions about how to address the looming debt crisis caused by Covid-19, our first few episodes of Clauses and Controversies look backwards, albeit to historical events with current salience. Episode Two is our first official episode and is about pre-PRC Chinese bonds that have been in default since before World War II. One of us (Mitu) loves this topic and the other (Mark) increasingly flies into a rage whenever it comes up.

Our guests are the wonderful Tracy Alloway of Bloomberg (whose article about these bonds last year went viral), sovereign debt guru Lee Buchheit (who knows more about the history of these types of bonds than anyone – here’s the FT's Robin Wigglesworth on Lee), and Alex Xiao, a former student who is working on a paper on this topic.

The subject of defaulted Chinese bonds is back in the news, largely in connection with U.S.-Chinese trade talks. (Are there trade talks?) A group of ardent Trump supporters have apparently accumulated a bunch of these bonds. Izabella Kaminska of the FT wrote about this a recently, and so did Fox Business a couple of days ago. (The Fox Business piece was a bit more enthusiastic, shall we say, than the others.) Previous lawsuits seeking to enforce them have failed on sovereign immunity and statute of limitations grounds, so these investors are lobbying the President to negotiate a recovery for them as part of his trade talks. And there is some reason to think the administration might be interested. The President is inclined to anti-China and anti-Chinese rhetoric, and these defaulted bonds are an opportunity to indulge that impulse further. Plus, Chinese institutions hold huge amounts of U.S. government debt, and some have floated the loony idea that these defaulted Chinese bonds could be used to offset some of that debt. For a deeper dive, here is a fun piece, The Emperor’s Old Bonds, by three former students.

So, why do we have a love hate relationship with these bonds? Here are the remarks we sent our expert guests as a prelude to asking for their views.

Continue reading "Episode Two of Clauses and Controversies: Imperial Chinese Bonds" »

Clauses and Controversies podcast

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Both of us are teaching 1L Contracts online this semester and fear we also may have to do the same for our joint Duke/UNC sovereign debt class next semester. One silver lining is that we have been forced to think of ways to break up the normal class routine. One of these ways is that we are creating a podcast titled "Clauses and Controversies." Thanks to our superb producer, Leanna Doty, the first three episodes are up on iTunes, and Soundcloud, and Overcast. We wanted to come up with something to expose students to ideas and topics that excite us, while giving them a chance to hear conversations with our favorite commentators who study and work on contracts and sovereign debt. The timing seemed right, too, as the economic fallout of Covid-19 may cause many sovereign debt defaults and restructurings.

There is no global mechanism for efficiently and fairly handling a global wave of sovereign financial distress and default. The wave almost hit this past March, when the financial system hit a sudden stop as people seemed to finally recognize the pandemic. Since then, massive infusions of Official Sector capital have allowed government borrowing to continue. But another sudden stop may be in the offing, and even if not the long-term economic damage of the pandemic may tip governments into insolvency.

The first episode is an introduction, which sets out what we hope to do with the series and then gets into the ongoing dispute over whether investors can seize Venezuela’s prize oil refinery in Texas. The absence of a handful of words in the PDVSA governing law clause might make all the difference. But we don’t think it should. (For anyone seeking a deeper dive into the issue, see here.)

We owe an immense debt to our friends in the business who have been so generous in giving us their time, energy, and insight. We also owe a debt to Dave Hoffman and Tess Wilkinson-Ryan for providing us with inspiration with their brilliant contract law podcast series, “Promises, Promises." Fair warning: they are much more brilliant and hilarious than we are. It must be a treat to be in their classes.

The US Government Mumbles Something in Support of Venezuela

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Judicial outcomes are determined by a variety of factors beyond precedent, statutory text, and other purely legal inputs. One factor, especially in cases involving foreign governments, is the preference of the U.S. government. In the middle of the 20th century, the government’s preferences often were dispositive, because the State Department had final say over whether U.S. courts could exercise jurisdiction over foreign states. The State Department eventually tired of being caught in the middle of  these disputes and Congress passed the buck to the judiciary, which now makes immunity determinations in accordance with the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

Still, U.S. administrations periodically put a thumb on the scale in favor of a foreign state. On occasion, this happens even when relations with the foreign state aren’t especially friendly. Foreign sovereign immunity tends to be reciprocal, and the government worries that an overly assertive approach by U.S. courts will prompt courts in other countries to retaliate by asserting expansive jurisdiction over the United States. Still, what’s happening in the Crystallex litigation is a bit unusual. Until now, U.S. sanctions have been the primary tool by which the government has protected Venezuelan assets in the United States. Thus, the U.S. largely sat idle while the federal judiciary ruled that Venezuela and state-oil company PDVSA were alter egos, such that assets formally belonging to PDVSA could be attached by creditors of the Republic itself. Because of that holding, the District Court in Delaware is currently busy trying to figure out whether and how to conduct an execution sale of PDVSA’s equity in PDV Holding, the ultimate parent company of Citgo. (For more, see here and here).

And then, as Anna Szymanski describes in her piece for Reuters that went up earlier today (here), the U.S. government filed a "statement of interest" in the matter.

Continue reading "The US Government Mumbles Something in Support of Venezuela" »

Some Confusion About Argentina’s Power to Reverse an Acceleration

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

As negotiations between the Argentine government and its creditors have gotten increasingly acrimonious, some have begun talking about litigation. Because Argentina’s bonds have collective action clauses, it can impose restructuring terms on dissenting creditors as long as it has the support of a supermajority. Even if it doesn’t have supermajority support to do the cram down, it still has weapons.

One important weapon that often gets overlooked in discussions of the cram down power is the power to rescind or reverse a decision by creditors to accelerate the debt. In effect, this is a power to create a standstill. Argentina’s bonds have some relatively unusual provisions in this regard. One possible interpretation of these provisions is that Argentina is about to lose the ability to reverse an acceleration. We think this interpretation is wrong, but we have heard it raised with some frequency and want to address it here.

Continue reading "Some Confusion About Argentina’s Power to Reverse an Acceleration" »

PDVSA’s 2020 Bonds: When and Why Does Venezuelan Law Matter?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

In 2016, the Maduro government bought some time through a debt exchange in which holders of maturing bonds issued by state oil company PDVSA swapped them for new bonds due in 2020. The new bonds were collateralized by a 50.1% interest in the U.S. parent company of Citgo. Now that the U.S. no longer recognizes the Maduro administration, the new Venezuelan government sued in the Southern District of New York asking to invalidate the bonds and the collateral pledge. It points to Venezuelan law requiring legislative approval for contracts in the “national public interest,” which didn’t happen here. For background, see our posts from last October, here and here.

The initial briefs have been filed, and not surprisingly the parties disagree about the relevance of Venezuelan law. The PDVSA 2020 bonds are governed by New York law. Venezuela argues that this does not matter, that Venezuelan law determines whether the bonds are valid. The indenture trustee argues that Venezuelan law is irrelevant, that New York law is all that matters, and that under New York law the bonds are enforceable. We’ve seen similar disputes a lot of late, including in connection with debt issued by Ukraine, Mozambique, and Puerto Rico. A government issues foreign-law debt that it later claims was unlawful under its own law. What law governs the dispute?

We have been mulling this question for some time now. At first, we thought it was straightforward, and we suspect many market participants feel the same way. But it is more complicated than a simple foreign versus domestic binary. The end result is this paper, Unlawfully-Issued Sovereign Debt.

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Selling CITGO--Timing and Process

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Yesterday was the deadline for opening briefs regarding the writ of attachment and potential execution sale of PDVSA’s shares in PDVH, the parent company of US oil refiner CITGO. As expected, Venezuela has asked the court to set aside the writ of attachment. Other briefs argue about what an execution sale should look like, if a sale goes forward. An execution sale is typically an informal, auction-on-the-courthouse-steps kind of thing. That’s not the usual way to sell a multi-billion dollar oil company.

Here’s a very quick summary of the filings, with links to the briefs. And here’s a bit more background, focusing on the timing and process of any execution sale.

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The Argentine Re-Designation Drama: Notes From Two Frustrated Readers

posted by Mark Weidemaier

By Mitu Gulati and Mark Weidemaier

In 2014, after much fanfare, a shiny new set of collective action clauses was released by ICMA (the International Capital Markets Association), with the endorsement of the IMF, the US Treasury, and others. The inspiration for these clauses? The fact that Argentina, after its 2001 default, got taken to the cleaners by hedge funds who found ways to exploit ambiguities (pari passu) and oddities (FRANs) in the terms of its debt contracts. The new ICMA CACs were supposed to protect against the risk of holdouts (by letting a super-majority of bondholders quash minority holdouts) while constraining opportunistic behavior by sovereigns (by limiting the sovereign’s ability to coerce creditors into supporting a restructuring). But for all of the good intentions behind these 2014 ICMA CACs, they are long, complicated, and leave gaps for clever parties to exploit. And Argentina’s 2020 restructuring proposal may just illustrate the problem.

Many creditors are irate about Argentina’s exchange offer, so much so that some of them say they no longer want the 2014 ICMA CACs. We have been struggling to understand why the offer got them so upset. Fortunately, Anna Szymanski of Reuters Breaking Views put out a piece titled “Argentina Gets Cheeky With its Creditors” earlier today that makes the basics of the drama clear (here). Cribbing from Anna’s research, here is how we understand what is going on and why creditors are irate.

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How Are So Many EM Sovereigns Issuing New Debt?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu Gulati and Mark Weidemaier

We have been working on building a dataset of sovereign bonds and their contract terms. Given the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic--close to 100 countries have approached the IMF for assistance--we would not have been surprised if few low- to mid-income countries had issued sovereign bonds in recent months. Instead, there have been large issuances by Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Philippines, Hungary, Mexico and others. 

Take Mexico, one of the biggest players in the sovereign debt market. The country has been badly hit not only by Covid-19 but by brutal drops in oil prices, tourism, and remittances. These developments surely increased the need to borrow in dollar/euro bond markets, but we would have expected investors to balk, or at least to demand punitive coupons. But that doesn’t seem to have happened.

What explains investors’ continued willingness to lend? Might they have drunk the bleach-flavored Kool-Aid and decided that there will be no deep and sustained economic downturn? Possible, we suppose, but unlikely. More plausible explanations include (i) that financial markets are so awash with QE money that investors have few places to go for yield and (ii) that investors may be betting that countries will be bailed out by an official sector desperate to prevent widespread defaults on sovereign debt.

But, because we are interested in the terms of sovereign bonds, we also wondered if investors were demanding extra contractual protections against the risk of non-payment. That would be a sensible precaution given the likelihood that many countries will be unable to make payments. Indeed, colleagues working on M&A contracts have documented a trend towards including risk-shifting clauses that explicitly address pandemic-related events (for a recent paper by Jennejohn, Talley & Nyarko, see here). With superb research assistance from Amanda Dixon, Hadar Tanne, and Madison Whalen, we wondered whether we would find a similar trend in the sovereign bond markets.

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Immunity, Necessity and the Enforcement of Italian Debt in the Era of Covid-19

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

The sovereign debt world has been debating how to design an emergency debt standstill for the poorest nations, so that they can devote scarce resources to public health rather than debt service. As we’ve discussed on this blog, the question has come up as to whether countries might be able to use the customary international law doctrine of necessity to defend against creditor lawsuits.

Our discussion hasn’t focused on any particular jurisdiction, although we have implicitly assumed that much of the litigation would take place in New York. Now, let us switch gears to assume (plausibly, we think) that Italy is one of the countries that might need a debt standstill. It has been among the worst hit by COVID-19 and will likely soon have a debt/GDP ratio upwards of 150%. To quote a scary new report out from Schroders (here): “Italy is the prime candidate for being the first [Eurozone] casualty [from the Covid-19 crisis]. Its high indebtedness and lack of economic growth require policies that are either illegal in the eurozone, or politically unpalatable domestically.” 

Our work on the mechanics of an Italian debt restructuring—see here (Mark) and here (Theresa Arnold, Ugo Panizza, and Mitu)—has not discussed necessity or other defenses to enforcement. That’s because most of Italy’s debt is subject to Italian law, and our focus was on how Italy might change this law to enable a restructuring. But let us say that Italy does not take this approach. Perhaps it continues to pretend that a debt restructuring is simply inconceivable. It does not lay any legal groundwork for a restructuring. Instead, Italian politicians simply pray for some magical combination of high growth (unprecedented) and a no-strings-attached bailout package from European authorities. In that event, it is conceivable that a sudden spike in interest rates might prevent Italy from making payments. Assuming no immediate European bailout (Italy’s politicians have demonstrated a distaste for any of the conditionality that would come with ESM funding), that means some risk of having to defend the non-payment against creditor lawsuits.

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Further Thoughts on Necessity as a Reason to Defer Sovereign Debt Obligations

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu and I posted some preliminary thoughts about the defense of necessity, which might be raised as a basis for allowing sovereign borrowers to defer debt service during the crisis. I wanted to follow up on some of the open issues. A few are technical, addressing some potential objections to the defense. I’ll deal with these first and close with a more fundamental question: What good does this potential defense really do for a sovereign? In thinking through that question, my premise is that many sovereigns will need a temporary standstill on debt service during the crisis. For proposals to this effect, see here, here, and here. (Others will eventually need a debt restructuring, but that’s a topic for another day.) But of course private creditors must agree to a standstill on payments. Those who don’t might sue or file arbitration claims, which will potentially put the sovereign's assets at risk and will certainly consume time and resources to defend. [Last sentence edited for clarity.]

Some background

Necessity is a rule of customary international law. As expressed in Article 25 of the International Law Commission’s draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, a state can invoke necessity to excuse its non-performance of an “international obligation” if non-performance is the only way to address “a grave and imminent peril,” as long as non-performance does not seriously impair an essential interest of the “State or States towards which the obligation exists.” Even if these conditions are satisfied, the state cannot invoke necessity to excuse the violation of an international obligation that “excludes the possibility of invoking necessity.” (Put differently, the doctrine purports to treat necessity as a default rule.) Nor can a state invoke the defense if it has contributed to the state of necessity. Finally, even if the defense is available, non-performance is excused only while the threat persists. The state must resume performance when the crisis ends, and it may have to pay compensation for any loss caused by its non-compliance.

It may not be obvious, but this is a remarkably crabbed conception of “necessity.”

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Necessity in the Time of COVID-19

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

COVID-19 has wrought an unprecedented economic crisis, which will most severely impact the poorest countries. Anna has written insightfully (here and here) about the G-20’s agreement to a temporary debt standstill for a subset of poor countries. And there have been numerous proposals (e.g., here and here) for a broader standstill to allow all countries the ability to devote necessary financial resources to the crisis. The basic idea behind these proposals is that countries should have the option to defer debt payments to both official and private creditors during the time of the crisis. A limitation of these proposals is that their efficacy depends on high levels of voluntary participation by private creditors. What is to stop less public-spirited creditors from insisting on full payment, even filing lawsuits or arbitration claims to enforce their debts? One answer to this question is that borrower governments could invoke the defense of necessity—long recognized as a rule of customary international law—as a defense to such lawsuits. We want to address that defense here briefly, recognizing that the topic deserves a lengthier treatment than we can give it here.

To clarify, here is how we understand the necessity defense: If successfully invoked, a sovereign could defer payment of any principal and interest that came due during the crisis, although it would have to make the payments once the crisis ended. It might also (although this is less clear) have to pay some compensation, likely in the form of interest on the delayed payments. But any compensation would reflect a below-market interest rate. In this sense, investors would suffer a real loss. They would be subsidizing the crisis response, although this does not make them unique. So is every other person with a claim on the sovereign’s resources, including the citizens and residents for whose welfare the state is responsible.

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Lebanon’s Vexing Modification Clause

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We posted earlier about Lebanon’s befuddling fiscal agency agreement. Understanding what exactly the modification provision in this contract means to say is key because Lebanon is in the process of trying to restructure its obligations to bondholders. 

To recap, the chief oddity is that the agreement seems to have only one voting threshold for modifying the bonds (75%).  That makes it relatively easy for dissident investors to block a restructuring. A typical sovereign bond has two voting thresholds, a higher one for payment-related and other “core” terms and a lower one for non-core terms (usually 50%, but sometimes 66.67%). If Lebanon’s bonds lack a lower voting threshold for non-core terms, this would negate the government’s most feasible restructuring strategy, which would involve the use of exit consents to discourage holdouts.  Now, in theory, it is possible that Lebanon and its creditors consciously negotiated a special type of sovereign debt contract totally precluding the use of exit consents. But if that were the case, we’d think that everyone involved (creditors, debtors, rating agencies and so on) would have been aware and this matter would have been prominently flagged on the front pages of the offering document.  Best we can tell, none of that happened.

So, assuming there is no evidence that this was a specially designed anti-exit consent vehicle, the next question to ask is what arguments can be made for enabling the use of the technique. We see two arguments—closely related but distinct—for allowing the government to modify non-core terms at a voting threshold lower than 75%. Apologies; this will be a bit technical.

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Subordinating Holdouts in a Lebanese Restructuring

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Our prior post expressed frustration with the drafting of Lebanon’s fiscal agency agreement, and particularly the collective action clause. The CAC both lacks the aggregation features that are now standard in the market and potentially blocks the use of exit consents. Creditors with a 25% stake in a Lebanese bond issuance would therefore have the whip hand in restructuring negotiations. We noted that this was not the necessary reading of the FAA, but it was certainly plausible given the contract’s idiosyncratic drafting.

But there are other unusual attributes of the FAA that work in the government’s favor, including one that seems to give the government power to subordinate holdout creditors to restructuring participants and other favored creditors.

The oddity appears in the pari passu clause in the Lebanese FAA. This is the same clause, of course, that gave Argentina so much trouble between 2012-2016. Oversimplified, the clause is a relatively ambiguous promise that creditors will be treated equally with other similarly-situated creditors. In Argentina’s case, federal courts in New York interpreted the clause to prohibit the government from legally subordinating one set of bondholders (holdouts) to another (restructuring participants). Argentina violated that prohibition by, among other things, enacting a law in 2005 that forbade the government to pay or negotiate with holdouts. Six years later, the courts ruled that Argentina had violated the clause and issued an injunction that forbade the country to service its restructured debt unless it also paid holdouts in full. (More details here and here.)

Lebanon’s pari passu clause is pretty much the polar opposite of Argentina’s.

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Making (Non)Sense of The Lebanese Fiscal Agency Agreement

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

After trying but failing to locate the fiscal agency agreements underlying Lebanese bond issues, we finally managed to get our hands on this one. We had hoped that the FAA would clarify the respective legal positions of the Lebanese government and its investors. Nope. Our review of the FAA leaves us scratching our heads. The original contract dates from 1999—this is the 3d amended version from 2010—and was one of the first post-Brady-era bonds issued under New York law to include a collective action clause. We were eager to see it and had even heard it had been carefully designed to minimize the risk of holdouts in the event of a restructuring. Certainly the government has reason to fear holdouts, such as London-based hedge fund Ashmore.

This may be the weirdest CAC ever. Taken as a whole, the FAA also includes just about the weakest set of anti-holdout tools we have seen. The Lebanese government may have to get creative to restructure.

Let’s start with the CAC. For background, Ashmore is rumored to hold over 25% in aggregate principal amount of multiple Lebanese bond issues (here). That’s enough to block a restructuring vote in most first-generation CACs (i.e., those that first took hold in the NY market around 2003). Lebanon’s CACs are even older; it adopted them at a time when CACs virtually never appeared in NY-law bonds.

For reasons not obvious to us, Lebanon’s lawyers were New York specialists but operated out of London. For reasons that are also not entirely clear, they designated New York law to govern but then bolted on modification provisions (the CAC) derived from the template then in use in the English law market. The end result is confounding.

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Venezuela, Lebanon, and Tools to De-Fang “Rush-In” Creditors

posted by Mark Weidemaier

A follow-up on my exchange with Mitu (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) about whether a judgment-holder is bound by the terms of a restructuring accomplished via a sovereign bond’s collective action clause (CAC). The broader concern is that “rush-in” creditors—bondholders who file suit and obtain money judgments, thereby escaping the effect of any modification vote pursuant to the CAC—might jeopardize the prospects of a successful restructuring. Again, the subtext here is Venezuela, and perhaps Lebanon as well.

Note that, although my discussion with Mitu focused on CACs, one could have the same discussion about other bond provisions. Consider acceleration provisions. For example, what if 25% of bondholders vote to accelerate the bond, and a plaintiff subsequently gets a judgment for the full amount of accelerated principal, but then a majority of creditors vote to rescind the acceleration? The short answer to both questions is that the subsequent vote has no effect on the judgment holder. As I noted in my earlier posts, that’s not to say subsequent events like these can’t have an effect; it is just that they are not likely to have one in the ordinary course of events.*

The reason is quite simple. It is that the judgment is an entirely separate source of rights from the underlying legal claim that produced it. This is a practical consequence of the “merger” doctrine, which provides that a judgment extinguishes the plaintiff’s claim (not the contract, the claim). Thereafter, the plaintiff can’t bring another action on the same legal claim but can bring a subsequent action on the judgment. (Such an action differs from judgment enforcement proceedings such as attachment and execution, but we’ll set that detail to one side.)

We can simplify--and avoid discussion of "merger" and associated legal doctrines--by focusing attention away from CACs and onto other bond provisions, which can more plausibly be modified in ways that will affect judgment holders. Consider the following sequence:

(1) The sovereign defaults and investors have a claim to bond principal (whether because the bond was accelerated or because the default was a failure to pay the principal when due);

(2) A plaintiff holding a minority in principal amount of the bonds sues and gets a money judgment for the full principal owed on those bonds;

(3) Thereafter, the issuer conducts a debt exchange in which participating bondholders vote to modify the exchanged bonds by removing the waiver of execution immunity.

Would this modification affect the judgment holder? Of course it would—at least, assuming courts do not reject this use of the exit amendment as unduly coercive.

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Judgments > CACs!!!!

posted by Mark Weidemaier

There is a subtext to my recent exchange with Mitu (here, here, and here) about whether a judgment-holder is bound by a subsequent vote to modify a bond’s payment terms, and it is of course Venezuela. U.S. sanctions prevent a restructuring of Venezuelan debt, and this long delay creates a window in which many creditors might obtain judgments. (It hasn’t happened but, you know, it’s a thing that could happen.) Mitu’s disarmingly “simple-minded” query in his most recent post is (of course) quite sophisticated. Might we view the CAC as an inter-creditor undertaking, such that, for example, after a successful restructuring vote participating bondholders could sue judgment-holders for a pro-rata share of any recovery the judgment-holder had managed to extract?

Before I go into a more detailed reply, a general comment. If one thinks that inter-creditor rivalry is a problem in sovereign debt restructuring—and a decision to litigate early is a form of inter-creditor rivalry, in the sense that a litigating creditor hopes to (i) avoid the effect of a restructuring and (ii) potentially earn a priority claim to the proceeds of any sale of attached sovereign assets—then one will want to find ways to limit inter-creditor rivalry. Perhaps the most elegant solution is to posit the existence of inter-creditor duties. I’m not entirely sure what Mitu has in mind when he posits a duty to “accept a supermajority [restructuring] decision.” (He’s raising this as a question, not necessarily insisting that the duty exists, but I’ll treat it as his proposal—hopefully that’s not too unfair.) Would the breach of that duty give rise to a cause of action for damages—measured, say, by any delay in resumption of payment caused by the lawsuit?* Would it require the judgment-holder to share with restructuring participants the proceeds of any recovery on the judgment, to the extent the recovery exceeded the NPV of the restructured bonds? I suspect this latter option is what Mitu has in mind, because it would eliminate incentives to litigate (or “rush-in,” as Steven Bodzin puts it). It would also be consistent with clever transaction structures that Mitu and Lee Buchheit have proposed elsewhere, which are designed to force holdouts to share any recovery with restructuring participants.

But here’s the thing. It might be a great idea to de-fang holdouts (or, in this context, rush-ins) like this. It would also be a great idea for every reader of this blog to send me $100. Alas, the modification provisions in sovereign bonds require neither thing.

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Judgments > CACs

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu’s post from two-days ago frames an important question. An investor holds a defaulted sovereign bond that includes a collective action clause, sues, and gets a final judgment for the full amount of the outstanding principal. Later, a majority of the remaining bondholders vote to restructure the bond’s payment terms—say, by accepting a 50% haircut. Is the judgment-holding investor somehow bound by this decision? If not, doesn’t this allow prospective holdout investors to circumvent the CAC by rushing to court to get a judgment? Let’s call this the judgment-trumps-CAC argument. Mitu’s post nicely highlights the importance of this question and some of the legal uncertainties. He also describes the judgment-trumps-CAC argument—tongue partially in cheek?—as “not crazy.”

Indeed, the judgment-trumps-CAC argument is not crazy. It is super-duper not-crazy, to the point of being unquestionably correct.* So it seems to me, anyway. Conceivably, a sovereign could use the bond’s subsequent modification as a basis for seeking relief from the judgment, though I wouldn’t fancy its odds of success. But absent such a development—which, importantly, requires judicial intervention—the judgment-holder can enforce the judgment.**

Without getting bogged down in detail, here are just a few reasons why.

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Venezuela’s Weird (and Possibly Mythical?) Prescription Clause

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Ben Bartenstein at Bloomberg has a provocative article on “prescription” clauses in Venezuela’s post-2005 sovereign bonds. As he explains, these clauses arguably modify the statute of limitations that would otherwise apply to bondholder claims, creating a “loophole” that might cost investors billions. Beginning in 2005, the Republic’s bond prospectuses began to include language like this (from a bond maturing in 2026):

Claims in respect of principal and interest will become void unless presentation for payment is made within a period of ten years in the case of principal and three years in the case of interest from the Relevant Date, to the extent permitted by applicable law…

As Bartenstein notes, the meaning of the clause isn’t entirely clear. But he suggests that it might be interpreted to “let Venezuela off the hook on unpaid interest to any creditor after three years—provided the creditor doesn’t take legal action seeking repayment during that span.”

This is a great find by Bartenstein, and he’s right to highlight the risks associated with the clause. But we doubt the clauses have this effect. Actually, we’re not sure the clauses even exist. But first, some background. (Full disclosure: One of us (Mitu) talked to Ben about his find and was rather unhelpful to him; not even having been aware of these clauses prior to Ben flagging them.)

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A Cautionary Tale: Argentina’s Pari Passu Debt Debacle

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Tim Harford of the Financial Times has a brilliant new podcast, Cautionary Tales (here). A recent episode, “Danger, Rocks Ahead!,” centers on the wreck of the Torrey Canyon, an enormous oil tanker manned by an experienced crew and captain. Sailing under clear skies, but under a deadline, the ship ran aground on an infamous reef, The Seven Stones, off the southwest coast of the U.K. Harford recounts the series of decisions leading to the disaster, each small misjudgment slowly reducing the margin of error, until none was left. The lesson for Harford is about path dependence. Having committed to a course of action, people often don’t react and adapt when new information reveals flaws in the plan. Thus the experienced Torrey Canyon crew drove their ship onto the rocks when it should have been trivially easy to recognize and avoid the looming catastrophe.

Okay – so this is perhaps not the only metaphor for Argentina, but it fits, and we wanted to mention the Cautionary Tales podcast to Credit Slips readers. Harford’s story about the Torrey Canyon also made us wonder whether Argentina’s debt debacle of 2001-2016 might offer a cautionary tale for the country’s current crisis. We think it does. In fact, one might understand the legal disaster that unfolded over 2001-2016 as the product of a series of misjudgments by Argentine officials. These misjudgments slowly reduced the country’s margin for error and gradually persuaded the U.S. federal judges overseeing litigation against the country that Argentina no longer warranted their sympathy.

We won’t recount the details of Argentina’s decade-long, and ultimately disastrous, battle with holdout creditors. The FT’s Joseph Cotterill recounted the entire saga at FT Alphaville, see, e.g., here), and Bloomberg’s Matt Levine wrote about the 2016 settlement (see here, here and here). We’ll focus instead on the mistakes made along the way.

A simple explanation for Argentina’s legal disaster is that a few U.S. federal judges interpreted an obscure term in Argentina’s bond contracts (the pari passu clause) in an unexpected way and fashioned a novel and unprecedented equitable remedy that ultimately forced Argentina to settle. There’s some truth to this story, but it focuses attention on the outcome—the ship hitting the reef—rather than on the series of missteps that turned that outcome from a remote possibility to a near certainty.

A more complete story needs to highlight the failure of various actors on the Argentine side to take some simple, cheap steps that might have avoided disaster. There were plenty of warning signs along the way. But Argentine officials repeatedly failed to take note and adapt.

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Sovereign Gold Bonds in 2019: Really?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

For a while now, we have been meaning to write about “sovereign gold bonds,” or “SGBs,” which the Indian government has been marketing under domestic law to residents of the country since November 2015. Gold bonds were supposed to have been a thing of the past. We’ve written previously about the U.S. government’s abrogation of gold clauses in both public and private debt in the 1930s. Last seen (to our knowledge) in government and corporate debt around that time, these clauses obliged the borrower to repay in either gold or currency at the option of the holder. (For detailed treatments, see here, here and here.) The point was to protect investors against currency devaluation. Thus, the famous case of Perry v. United States concerned U.S. government bonds that provided for payment of principal and interest “in United States gold coin of the present standard of value.” As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized, the promise sought “to assure one who lent his money to the government and took its bond that he would not suffer loss through depreciation in the medium of payment.” (An investor also would not benefit from an appreciation in the value of the currency, for payment was tied to gold coin of the “present standard of value.”)

The bonds in Perry were “Liberty” bonds issued to finance the 1st World War. The government therefore marketed the bonds as patriotic investments, although then, as now, marketers favored subtlety over heavy-handed appeals to emotion.

Liberty Bond photo

Regrettably for investors, it also turned out to be their patriotic duty to accept less than full payment.

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Dysfunctional Sovereign Debt Politics in Lebanon, Italy, and [Your Country Here]

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Debt, like the full moon, is known to make politicians act strangely. There have been some good examples over the last few weeks, most recently in Lebanon and Italy.

Let’s begin with Lebanon. The country has a huge foreign currency debt stock, dwindling capital reserves, and one of the highest debt/GDP ratios in the world (here, here and here). Investors are concerned, and this is reflected in yields on Lebanese bonds and in the prices of CDS contracts, which reflect an estimated 5-year default risk of around 80%. Last week, Lebanon made a large principal payment on a $1.5 billion bond that had matured, and then turned around and borrowed more, issuing two new dollar bonds with a total principal amount of around $3 billion. These moves bought time, but at the cost of further straining the country’s scarce foreign currency reserves and adding to its debt burden. Why not instead simply ask for an extension of maturities on the existing bonds, buying time to devote resources to something other than debt service?

This head-in-the-sand approach is pretty typical. Politicians often delay debt restructuring far longer than they should. No award goes to the politician who recognizes and addresses a debt problem early, when it is still manageable. A politician who utters the word “default” is likely to get tossed out of office before the benefits of timely action become clear. And while in an ideal world, international financial institutions like the IMF might help produce better decisions, that rarely happens.

But it’s not just that the Lebanese government won’t acknowledge the problem. For some years, the government has delayed obvious reforms to its bond contracts that would have made a restructuring easier to manage.

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Stupid Public Debt Tricks—The Alleged Seniority of Public Debt in Italy, the U.S., and Beyond

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Earlier this year, we wrote an article with Ugo Panizza and Grace Willingham about an unusual type of promise made by some sovereign nations, including Spain and Greece. The promise—sometimes enshrined in the constitution, other times in basic law—is that the state will pay holders of its public debt ahead of any other claimant. It is an unusual promise to make, in part because it doesn’t seem credible. (For separate discussion, by Buchheit, Gousgounis and Gulati, see here.)

Neither logic nor history suggests that a country in debt crisis will really treat public debt claims as senior to basic social obligations such as salaries for government doctors, police, and firefighters. When push comes to shove, responsible state actors have reason to favor the needs of the populace over the claims of financial creditors. And if this happens, it is not clear that local courts will step in to ensure that the government prioritizes debt payments.

On the other hand, perhaps these promises have some value? Even if financial creditors don’t get paid in full and ahead of other claimants, perhaps these promises lead them to anticipate slightly higher payouts in the event of a debt crisis and restructuring. Our article with Ugo and Gracie tries to test this hypothesis by asking whether governments that make such promises lower their borrowing costs. We find no evidence that they do. So why make the promise in the first place? There seems to be little upside, and the downside risk is that disappointed financial creditors will assert claims that could delay resolution of a debt crisis.

Speaking of which, we were going to talk about Italy, with its public debt of roughly 2.7 trillion euros. Here’s Article 8 of the Consolidated Act governing the public debt, in English translation available on the Department of the Treasury’s website:

The payments of public debt are not reduced, paid late or subject to any special levy, not even in case of public necessity.

Oh right, sure. If there is a dire need to restructure the public debt, Italian officials will calmly explain to the populace that public services will be slashed to the bone because the claims of financial creditors simply “are not reduced.”

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Interpreting Argentina’s “Uniformly Applicable” Provision and Other Boilerplate

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Over the past week, we’ve discussed various uncertainties over how to interpret the new “uniformly applicable” standard added to aggregated Collective Action Clauses starting in 2014 (here and here). Anna Gelpern’s recent post neatly clarifies some of the issues and provides crucial background on the “uniformly applicable” provision. Oversimplifying, the “uniformly applicable” standard was an attempt to assuage creditor fears that sovereigns would exploit aggregated voting to discriminate among bondholder groups. The intent of the clause was to ensure bondholders got roughly—but as Anna points out, not literally—the same treatment. Our prior posts have focused on how the text of the standard might be stretched to forbid certain unanticipated restructuring scenarios, especially when courts perceive the sovereign to be acting irresponsibly or vindictively. That’s precisely the situation in which courts are willing to stretch the meaning of contract text. It’s what happened to Argentina in the pari passu litigation.

In this post, we focus on the broader question of how courts should approach the interpretation of bond clauses like this one. When presented with disputed but plausible interpretations of a text, courts normally try to uncover the intent of the contracting parties and interpret the contract consistently with that intent. (This is a generalization, but accurate enough for our purposes.) But bonds and other (largely) standardized contracts are different. For the most part, the point of standard language is to ensure standard meaning. That goal isn’t served, and can be undermined, when courts inquire into the subjective intentions of the parties to any particular contract. But if their intent isn’t relevant, whose is? Greg Klass, in a new article “Boilerplate and Party Intent,” offers an insightful way of thinking about these problems.

Argentina’s “uniformly applicable” standard offers a good example of the difficulty. The government officials responsible for negotiating sovereign bond deals generally want to adhere to a set of “market standard” non-financial terms. They have only a vague sense of the specific language of most contract terms. Likewise, many investors have told us that they paid little attention to the “uniformly applicable” language in Argentina’s bonds until Argentina went into crisis. They knew the bonds had CACs and, more concretely, that the clauses featured aggregation provisions. But, beyond that, they didn’t know the details. So a search for the intent of the parties—defined as the bondholder and the government—won’t turn up much of value. (In theory, underwriters are part of the equation, but their incentives are to get the deal done – and using standard forms helps get deals done.)

Continue reading "Interpreting Argentina’s “Uniformly Applicable” Provision and Other Boilerplate" »

Can Argentina Discriminate Against Bonds Issued Under Macri?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We hope readers will forgive our trafficking in rumors, but this one is interesting and raises some fun and wonky questions about the relationship between Argentina’s different bonds. We talked about those differences in our last post. Basically, bonds issued 2016 or later are easier to restructure than bonds issued in the country’s 2005 and 2010 debt exchanges. This Bloomberg article explains the differences. Interestingly—and here’s the underlying driver of the rumor—the exchange bonds were issued during the presidencies of Cristina Kirchner and Nestor Kirchner, while Mr. Macri was in office when the 2016 and later bonds were issued. The rumor—relayed to us by some of our friends in the investor community—is that the new government has signaled that it might restructure the Macri bonds, or perhaps just default on them, while leaving the Kirchner bonds untouched.

We’re skeptical that the government really intends to do this, for two reasons. First, the plan sounds insane. That’s not exactly proof that the new Kirchner government won’t do it. But maybe some officials just believe that the government can improve its negotiating position if it seems willing to consider crazy stuff. That might not be sound negotiation theory or whatever, but maybe some in the new government take this view.

The second reason for our skepticism is that we’re not sure Argentina’s bond contracts give it a practical way to engage in this type of discrimination. But this question is actually quite complicated and highlights some ambiguities in Argentina’s bonds. Contractual ambiguities are our caviar and champagne, so that’s what we want to talk about here.

Could the government simply default on the Macri bonds while continuing to pay the Kirchner bonds? Sure, but doing so would eventually trigger the cross-default provisions of the Kirchner bonds. Here is a summary of the relevant provisions, which we extract from the 2010 prospectus. The discussion is simplified, but includes the key details:

Continue reading "Can Argentina Discriminate Against Bonds Issued Under Macri? " »

Argentina’s [Insert Adjective Here] Debt Crisis

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Okay, everybody ready? Argentina? Check. Debt crisis? Check. Cristina Kirchner and crew back in office to, um, right the ship of state? Check. Last time round, their plan involved hurling insults at a U.S. federal judge. Like Spider Man: Far From Home, it was briefly amusing, lasted far too long, and ended badly. Argentina eventually caved in 2016, paying handsome sums to creditors who had sued it in U.S. courts. We won’t rehash the details, but there is great coverage by Joseph Cotterill, Matt Levine, Felix Salmon, Robin Wigglesworth and others. We also covered it extensively here on Credit Slips.

Yes, sure, it would be nice to have a break of more than three years between the formal end of an Argentine debt crisis and the start of a new one. But here we are. Argentina has again borrowed many billions USD under New York law. This time, the legal issues will be a bit different, because Argentina’s debt stock has different legal characteristics. Below, we offer a few preliminary thoughts.

Voluntary Reprofiling

On August 28, Argentina announced a plan to conduct a “voluntary reprofiling” of debt (here). Reprofiling is a fancy term for maturity extension. That sounds gentle—just a flesh wound!—but a long maturity extension can impose a significant NPV cut. Plus, reprofiling might be just the first step on a path that leads to a brutal debt restructuring. Creditors will distrust rosy predictions that a reprofiling will fix the problem. Many will refuse to participate. What happens then? 

Last time around, after its 2001 default, Argentina’s NY-law bonds required the unanimous approval of all the creditors before any alterations to the payment terms could be made. That requirement, of course, magnifies the risk of holdouts. And in fact, Argentina spent the next 15 years engaged in various legal battles (e.g., here).

This time, Argentina’s bonds have collective action clauses, or CACs, which let a super-majority of creditors bind a dissenting minority. If Argentina gets the requisite proportion of creditors to agree, it can impose a reprofiling on the entire group. Of course, the devil is in the fine print.

Continue reading "Argentina’s [Insert Adjective Here] Debt Crisis" »

A Mini Q&A on Venezuela’s Possible Defense to Foreclosure on the PDVSA 2020

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Along with Ugo Panizza of the Graduate Institute in Geneva, we’ve put up a couple of posts in recent days asking whether Venezuela might have a legal basis for challenging its obligations on the PDVSA 2020 bond (here and here). A large payment of close to a billion dollars is due in a few weeks and there is no money to pay it.  Most important, the bond is collateralized by a pledge of a majority stake in CITGO Holding.

The possible basis for the legal defense is that the bonds, and especially the pledge of collateral, were not properly authorized under Article 150 of the Venezuelan constitution. (This matter has also received press attention over the past few days—e.g., here and here).

As background, provisions in the Venezuelan constitution (Art. 312) and related Venezuelan laws require the passage of a “special law” (our translation) to authorize public indebtedness, but exempt PDVSA from the requirement. However, a separate constitutional provision, Article 150, requires “approval” from the National Assembly for contracts of national interest. We don’t know of situations in which the provision has been invoked. With apologies for possible mistranslations here and elsewhere in this post, here is the text:

Article 150. The entering into of national public interest contracts will require the approval of the National Assembly in the cases determined by law. 

No municipal, state, or national public interest contract can be entered into with States or foreign official entities or with companies not domiciled in Venezuela, not being assigned to them without the approval of the National Assembly.

The law may require in public interest contracts certain conditions of nationality, domicile or any other kind, or require special guarantees

For a Caracas Chronicles piece on this, see here.

We have gotten numerous questions in response to our two pieces, one at Project Syndicate and one here. There were many excellent questions. And since we find this topic fascinating (we are working on an empirical paper on governing law provisions in sovereign debt contracts), we decided to go down the rabbit hole of trying to answer them. 

The caveat here is that while we know a good bit about sovereign bond contracts, we have no expertise in Venezuelan constitutional law. Here goes:

Continue reading "A Mini Q&A on Venezuela’s Possible Defense to Foreclosure on the PDVSA 2020 " »

Can Creditors Seize CITGO? Enforcing the PDVSA 2020 Bond Collateral

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Writing with Ugo Panizza, we have a piece out today on Project Syndicate (Should Creditors Pay the Price for Dubious Bonds?) discussing the collateralized bond issued by Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA (the PDVSA 2020 bond). We have written here previously about the bond as well. In 2016, when PDVSA was near default, it conducted a debt swap in which investors exchanged short-maturity bonds for the longer-maturity PDVSA 2020. To sweeten the deal, the PDVSA 2020 bond was backed by collateral in the form of a 50.1% interest in CITGO Holding, the immediate parent company of U.S. oil refiner CITGO Petroleum.

A payment of nearly $1 billion is coming due in the next few weeks on the PDVSA 2020 bond. The Maduro regime—no longer recognized as the legitimate government of Venezuela—can’t pay it. And the government-in-exile led by Juan Guaidó—though it desperately wants to retain control of CITGO—presumably can’t afford to pay. If there is a default, and bondholders seize the collateral, the loss of CITGO may significantly disrupt Venezuela’s ability to recover from its current economic and humanitarian catastrophe. To be sure, the prospects of recovery are dim while Mr. Maduro remains in power, but if he leaves, the loss of CITGO will be a major blow.

The Project Syndicate article describes how, under Venezuelan law, the National Assembly must approve contracts of national interest. That didn’t happen here. Venezuela might therefore challenge the issuance of the PDVSA 2020 bond, and the grant of collateral, as lacking proper authorization under Venezuelan law. Ugo and we examine the potential justification for such a challenge at Project Syndicate.

Here, we focus on a more wonky question: Is the validity of the PDVSA 2020 bond and the pledge of collateral to be judged under Venezuelan law or New York law? And would the outcome change depending on which law governs? The answers turn out to be more complicated than one might think. But, given the court battle that we expect, rather important.

Continue reading "Can Creditors Seize CITGO? Enforcing the PDVSA 2020 Bond Collateral" »

Enough With the Old Chinese Debt Already

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

We may be partly to blame for the fact that stories keep surfacing about whether the U.S. government might help holders of pre-revolutionary, defaulted Chinese debt monetize their claims. Here’s Tracy Alloway of Bloomberg, with a good assessment of the political and legal basis for this kind of intervention. The bonds have been in default since the 1930s. China won’t pay these pre-PRC debts. Taiwan sends its regrets. But a vocal contingent of American bondholders is lobbying for the U.S. government to intervene. The precise manner of intervention is not clearly defined, but the basic idea is that the bondholders could assign their rights to the U.S. government, which could then use the bonds to offset U.S. debts to China. As Alloway quotes the President of the American Bondholders Foundation (a bondholder group): “What’s wrong with paying China with their own paper?”

Look, we’re torn here. Expressed like that, the idea is bonkers. No, it’s worse. If you’ll forgive an obscure theater reference: compared to a bonkers idea, this idea is lying “in the gutter looking up in wide-eyed admiration.” Sure, the US government could try to “pay” China with defaulted Chinese bonds. It could also try to pay with toilet paper or chewing gum.* We have to assume this would be a credit event triggering CDS contracts issued on the U.S. And to be fair, from a certain armchair perspective, that would be…entertaining?

Continue reading "Enough With the Old Chinese Debt Already" »

Third Circuit Affirms Crystallex Attachment Order

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the order allowing jilted Canadian mining company Crystallex to attach PDVSA's equity stake in PDV-Holding (the corporate parent of CITGO). Here's the unanimous opinion. (For prior coverage of the attachment ruling see here.) It's possible proceedings in the District Court might be delayed further if Venezuela seeks Supreme Court review, while the district judge resolves outstanding procedural questions (see here), or because of lingering uncertainty about whether the U.S. sanctions now in place will prevent an actual execution sale. So it's not exactly over. But on the core question--whether Venezuela's control over PDVSA was so extensive as to make the entity the government's alter ego--the Court of Appeals resoundingly rejected Venezuela's argument: "Indeed, if the relationship between Venezuela and PDVSA cannot satisfy the Supreme Court’s extensive-control requirement, we know nothing that can."

India to Issue its First Foreign Currency Sovereign Bond?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu Gulati & Mark Weidemaier

The two of us are beginning a project to build a dataset of foreign currency sovereign bonds and their contract terms. The dataset of bond issuances has a conspicuous absence: India.

Turns out India has never issued a foreign currency sovereign bond. Some state-owned enterprises have ventured onto the foreign markets in search of investors, but not the sovereign. This is a bit puzzling because India certainly has the economic growth and financial prospects to attract foreign investors. Countries like the Philippines, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, and China regularly tap the international markets. Indeed, closer to home, many of India’s smaller neighbors, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and even little Maldives, have tapped the foreign currency sovereign markets. We also know from our research that there is considerable appetite for Indian sovereign issuances from big investors in places like Singapore and Canada. The interest is such that foreign funds buy Indian domestic currency issuances despite the inflation risks they pose. Presumably, these funds would jump at the opportunity to buy a foreign currency issuance.

So, why not India?  Or, perhaps we should ask: Why now India? There are conflicting reports, but the government appears to be considering issuing an international, foreign-currency bond, likely yen- or euro-denominated. In a recent budget speech, the Finance Minister of India announced the plan (see here, for a recent Bloomberg story). Other reports, however, indicate that the office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has developed cold feet about the plan (see Bloomberg here). The Economic Times of India (here; and also this Money Control article) also describes how the senior bureaucrat who was in charge of the issuance has been transferred from the Finance Ministry to a less prominent position and is seeking to retire early.

Continue reading "India to Issue its First Foreign Currency Sovereign Bond?" »

Pre-Revolutionary Chinese Debt: An Investment for the Truly Stable Genius

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

About a year ago, an unusual securities action was brought against a pastor at one of the largest Protestant churches in the country and a financial planner. The accusation was that the two, Kirbyjon Caldwell and Gregory Smith, had duped elderly investors into buying participation rights in bonds issued by the pre-revolutionary Chinese government. The bonds have been in default since 1939. Here is the SEC’s press release; Matt Levine at Bloomberg talked about the case here. Among other things, the SEC accused Caldwell and Smith of violating the registration requirements of the federal securities laws and of committing fraud.

This case got a fair amount of attention because Mr. Caldwell is no ordinary pastor. He leads one of the largest congregations in the country, with roughly 14,000 members, and was a spiritual adviser to George W. Bush and Barack Obama (see here).

The core of the fraud case seems to be that Caldwell and Smith promised investors safe, quick returns. Allegedly, the plan was to sell the bonds for a profit or to get the Chinese government to pay up. From the SEC’s perspective, this was like promising to squeeze water from a stone; since the communist takeover in 1949, Chinese governments have steadfastly refused to pay the bonds.

It all sounds rather daffy. Also, weirdly specific. It can’t be easy to persuade people to open their pocketbooks for antique Chinese sovereign bonds. Still, we were struck by the SEC’s characterization of the bonds, in both the press release and the complaint, as “defunct” and as “collectible memorabilia with no meaningful investment value” (here and here). The characterization presumes the answer to a question that has long fascinated us, which is whether a sufficiently motivated claimant could enforce these bonds against China.

Continue reading "Pre-Revolutionary Chinese Debt: An Investment for the Truly Stable Genius" »

Venezuelan Debt: Soft Power Matters

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati

Last week, we did a post about a set of creative but long shot defenses that Venezuela’s Interim Government has invoked to defend against lawsuits by creditors holding defaulted debt. Basically, the government wants a stay of creditor enforcement efforts. The plaintiffs want summary judgment—i.e., a relatively quick entry of judgment, without a trial or significant fact-finding. The Interim Government’s defenses have equitable appeal but questionable (although not zero) legal merit. The defenses included the contract law defense of Impossibility and the customary international law defenses of Necessity and Comity. Impossibility rarely works, especially when the defendant’s argument boils down to, “I’m out of money and need time to work out a deal with my creditors.” Necessity and Comity may not even apply in cases arising from a sovereign’s default. However, the Interim Government’s legal team persuasively emphasized their client’s impossible situation—recognized as the legitimate representative of the country but unable to access its resources.

Judges have power, and much of this power is of the “soft” variety that comes, not from the ability to resolve substantive disputes, but from professional status and authority and from the ability to control process. Here, the judge has given the Interim Government a bit of the relief it wanted, in the form of a relatively favorable scheduling order.

Continue reading "Venezuelan Debt: Soft Power Matters " »

Equal Treatment in Sovereign Restructurings

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mitu Gulati & Mark Weidemaier

Last Friday, the Venezuelan government (at least, the representatives of that government recognized by the U.S.) issued a set of broad principles it intended to follow when it conducted the debt restructuring that is going to be necessary as soon as Mr. Maduro is given the proverbial boot from office.  One of those principles is going to be “equal treatment” of the various claims denominated in foreign currency – PDVSA bonds, promissory notes, Venezuelan sovereign bonds, arbitral awards and so on.  For those who are familiar with sovereign restructurings, the use of this broad equal treatment principle is going to be familiar (for example, Greece used it in 2012 when faced with an array of different types of debt instruments).

Our question is why.  The different debt instruments that Venezuela has – PDVSA bonds, sovereign bonds, Prom Notes, etc. – have different legal terms.  Some have stronger creditor rights and others have weaker ones. And that probably means that the current investors paid different amounts to buy them.  If investors paid different amounts for stronger versus weaker legal rights, doesn’t it stand to reason that the ones with the stronger rights should be offered a higher payout in a restructuring? And if they are not paid different amounts, isn’t that an invitation to the ones with stronger rights to engage in holdout behavior?

In Greece, for example, both the local-law governed Greek sovereign bonds and the foreign-law ones were offered the same deal.  Almost of the local-law bondholders took the deal, but relatively few of the foreign ones did. End result: Greece paid out the foreign-law bonds that refused the offer in full.  The same was true for a bunch of the Greek guaranteed debt. 

In Barbados, in the restructuring that is ongoing, the domestic-law bonds have taken the offer made by the government. But that same offer has been turned down the foreign-law bondholders; presumably because they think their instruments are worth more because of their stronger legal rights.  Wouldn’t it be efficient to offer the foreign holders more rather than getting mired in years of litigation?

There is undoubtedly a logic to the equal treatment principle.  We are wondering what it is. Efficiency? Maybe the logic is that if, for example, Venezuela were to offer the sovereign bonds requiring 100% of the creditors to approve of the restructuring a few cents more on the dollar than the ones requiring 75%, the whole process would get mired in disputes over whose bonds had stronger or weaker legal rights? Or maybe the logic is that investors will either hold out or not. Put differently, maybe there really is no marginal investor (i.e., one who, in exchange for a few extra pennies, might choose not to hold out and sue). Investors either have an appetite for litigation (in which case they aren’t interested in accepting restructuring terms) or they don’t (in which case there is no need to compensate them for rights they don’t have the appetite to assert). But again, we are speculating.

As a final puzzle, why are some bonds exempt from the equal treatment principle? The restructuring guidelines say that bonds backed by collateral will receive different treatment. But why? Why is a right to collateral different from a 100% voting right? Perhaps it is because some collateral pledges are relatively easy to enforce, such as the pledge of shares in U.S. entities. The PDVSA 2020 bonds are the primary example here. By contrast, a 100% voting right ensures the right to sue but doesn’t do much to help an investor enforce the judgment. However, the guidelines released by the Guaido team may have in mind something more than just the 2020s.

Evaluating Venezuela’s Guidelines for Debt Restructuring

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

As reported in the Financial Times, Reuters, and elsewhere, Juan Guaido’s economic and legal team has released a report setting out guidelines for a restructuring of Venezuelan debt. The report, attached here, describes a process that can only happen if/when Maduro loses power and the U.S. government lifts the current sanctions regime, which effectively forbids most transactions in Venezuelan debt. The report is a brief three pages, but it offers intriguing clues about what a restructuring might look like.

Proposals to restructure the Venezuelan debt must accommodate certain basic realities:

- The country is experiencing a dire humanitarian crisis, which demands immediate attention.

- The debt stock is utterly, needlessly complex. Venezuela has somewhere in the range of $200 billion in external liabilities. Virtually all creditors are unsecured, and every creditor’s repayment prospects are tied directly to the government’s ability to monetize one asset: oil. For all practical purposes, every creditor is in the same position. Yet the debt is spread across multiple obligors (the government, PDVSA, etc.) and a bewildering array of obligations (bonds, promissory notes, trade credits, arbitration awards, and who knows what else).

- The government therefore needs time—time to focus on humanitarian needs, time to rehabilitate the oil sector, time to stabilize the political situation, time to determine the full scope of its debts, time for a new government to come up with a credible economic plan for recovery, time to persuade key foreign companies that they won’t be expropriated again if they come back and help in the recovery, and time to come to terms with its creditors. But…

- It may not have much time. Many creditors have been patient. But a few have already reduced claims to judgment and initiated attachment proceedings against crucial government assets, including U.S. oil operations. It is surprising that the litigation floodgates have not opened, but that could happen any day now.

- The next government is going to be highly vulnerable to creditor lawsuits, and particularly so in the United States. It cannot right its economy without selling oil abroad (and sales in the U.S. are typically the cheapest, given refineries and distances). But these sales generate assets in foreign jurisdictions, where creditors will try to seize them. This vulnerability, paired with the complexity of its debt stock, makes Venezuela more akin to Iraq than to more recent crises.

- Finally, the U.S. government may prove a fickle ally. The most effective way to buy time for a Venezuelan restructuring would be for the U.S. and other key jurisdictions to block creditors from attaching Venezuelan assets while the government was engaged in good faith restructuring negotiations. This is what happened for Iraq, but will the Trump administration be able to collaborate with other key nations (China, Russia) to produce a solution similar to that designed for Iraq?  We don’t know.

These facts make for a very messy debt restructuring scenario. But that doesn’t mean the restructuring plan must be complicated. To the contrary, the proposal released by Mr. Guaido’s team attempts to simplify. (Note that the plan does not address debts owed to other nations, presumably including state-owned companies):

Timing and credibility: As noted, Venezuela needs time to address pressing humanitarian needs and, more broadly, to get its house in order. It also needs to persuade its creditors that it has accurately estimated its liabilities and repayment capacity. But the byzantine debt stock created by the Maduro regime, combined with the government’s long-standing refusal to engage with the IMF, means that creditors have little reason to accept the government’s estimates. Not surprisingly, then, the proposal envisions that the IMF will both provide emergency humanitarian assistance and play its usual role in assessing the country’s growth and repayment prospects.

Continue reading "Evaluating Venezuela’s Guidelines for Debt Restructuring" »

Venezuelan Debt Restructuring: Making Impossibility Possible?

posted by Mark Weidemaier

Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

There have been relatively few recent developments regarding Venezuela’s debt, as Maduro hangs on to power and U.S. government sanctions bar trading or restructuring of Venezuelan debt by U.S. persons. However, at least one important development has mostly escaped attention. Venezuela-watchers know that the U.S. government, along with many others, has recognized Juan Guaido’s team as the legitimate government of Venezuela. This had immediate implications for creditor lawsuits against Venezuela in U.S. courts. The first involved disputes over which legal team—the lawyers selected by Maduro or those selected by Guaido—had the dubious honor of representing the Venezuelan government. The answer (sensibly enough) seems to be that Guaido’s legal team calls the shots. But Mr. Guaido and his team represent a government in exile, without meaningful resources or real levers of power. Plus, no one denies that Venezuela has failed to pay its creditors. Normally, those facts lead courts to enter judgments in creditors’ favor and to let creditors attach government assets. What legal basis could a Guaido-led government have for resisting these lawsuits?

Court papers defending against the two latest creditor lawsuits reveal an intriguing and innovative strategy. The two cases are Pharo Gaia Fund Ltd et al. v. Venezuela & Casa Express Corp. v. Venezuela.  Both are pending before Judge Analisa Torres in federal court in the Southern District of New York. In filings made a couple of weeks ago (June 21, 2019), the lawyers for Venezuela (Arnold & Porter) raised three doctrines that one rarely sees in modern sovereign debt litigation for the simple reason that these ordinarily have little chance of success: impossibility, necessity and comity.

Continue reading "Venezuelan Debt Restructuring: Making Impossibility Possible?" »

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