The Western powers established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank after World War II as "permanent machinery" to anchor the Bretton Woods system. When developing countries began experiencing debt problems in the late 1960s, the Paris Club took shape as "ad hoc machinery" to restructure debt from export credit agencies. A decade later the London Club process emerged to handle workouts of commercial bank debt. Restructuring debt in the form of bonds became an issue in the late 1990s in Argentina and several other nations, and the IMF recently proposed a permanent mechanism to deal with that challenge. Restructuring Sovereign Debt explains why ad hoc machinery would function more effectively in the Bretton Woods system. By describing in detail the origins and operations of the London Club and Paris Club, Lex Rieffel highlights the pragmatism and flexibility associated with ad hoc approaches. He also recalls earlier proposals for creating permanent debt restructuring machinery and the reasons why they were not adopted. Recognizing that the issue of sovereign debt workout is complex, Rieffel has provided a comprehensive and detailed exposition of this important policy issue. Rieffel's book is an important tool for policymakers and the public, particularly as the global community seeks to resolve the debt problems of countries as diverse as Argentina, Iraq, and Côte d'Ivoire.

The question of intercreditor equity is one of the most contentious issues in debt restructuring, both historically and today. Intercreditor Equity in Sovereign Debt Restructuring maps and establishes the content of these intercreditor equity rules, and analyses how they influence the restructuring process. Through this analysis, Astrid Iversen outlines how creditors can predict their legal rights in the unfortunate event of a debt restructuring and strives to improve our understanding of the boundaries within which a debt restructuring offer must be designed. Iversen also seeks to shed light on the functioning of the legal framework governing sovereign debt more broadly. In this book, she examines whether intercreditor equity rules and the legal framework of sovereign debt are compatible with a debtor state's responsibility to ensure monetary and financial stability and to establish sustainable debt burdens. Iversen also explores how certain intercreditor equity rules constitute an obstacle to sustainable debt restructurings and highlights how the number of different intercreditor equity rules that a sovereign debtor state typically is bound by, as well as the scope of these rules, risk tightening the policy space of debtor states to the extent that it is difficult to design and implement a sustainable debt restructuring. Suitable as an introductory text for readers new to the topic of sovereign debt restructurings, and as an instructive guide for debt management offices, creditors, and their lawyers, this publication provides a comprehensive legal study of intercreditor equity rules in sovereign debt restructuring.

The book sheds light on the perhaps most important legal conundrum in the context of sovereign debt restructuring: the holdout creditor problem. Absent an international bankruptcy regime for sovereigns, holdout creditors may delay or even thwart the efficient resolution of sovereign debt crises by leveraging contractual provisions and, in an increasing number of cases, by seeking to enforce a debt claim against the sovereign in courts or international tribunals. Following an introduction to sovereign debt and its restructuring, the book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the holdout creditor problem in the context of the two largest sovereign debt restructuring operations in history: the Argentine restructurings of 2005 and 2010 and the 2012 Greek private sector involvement. By reviewing numerous lawsuits and arbitral proceedings initiated against Argentina and Greece across a dozen different jurisdictions, it distils the organizing principles for ongoing and future cases of sovereign debt restructuring and litigation. It highlights the different approaches judges and arbitrators have adopted when dealing with holdout creditors, ranging from the denial of their contractual right to repayment on human rights grounds to leveraging the international financial infrastructure to coerce governments into meeting holdouts’ demands. To this end, it zooms in on the role the governing law plays in sovereign debt restructurings, revisits the contemporary view on sovereign immunity from suit and enforcement in the international debt context, and examines how creditor rights are balanced with the sovereign’s interest in achieving debt sustainability. Finally, it advances a new genealogy of holdouts, distinguishing between official and private sector holdouts and discussing how the proliferation of new types of uncooperative creditors may affect the sovereign debt architecture going forward. While the book is aimed at practitioners and scholars dealing with sovereign debt and its restructuring, it should also provide the general reader with the understanding of the key legal issues facing countries in debt distress. Moreover, by weaving economic, financial, and political considerations into its analysis of holdout creditor litigation and arbitration, the book also speaks to policymakers without a legal background engaged in the field of international finance and economics.

Sovereign domestic debt restructurings have become more common in recent years and touched upon a growing share of total public debt. This paper offers a simple framework for policymakers to think about the decision whether to restructure domestic sovereign debt as part of an effort to reduce overall public indebtedness. It also highlights a rather wide range of technical, legal, and operational issues a sovereign may face while restructuring domestic debt. As expected, factors such as debt reduction required to achieve sustainability, fiscal savings from a restructuring, and economic costs of a restructuring are key inputs into the decision making regarding a restructuring, but so are factors such as the composition of debt, financial stability costs, and crisis preparedness, all of which are discussed in the paper.

In an environment characterized by weak contractual enforcement, sovereign lenders can enhance the likelihood of repayment by making their claims more difficult to restructure ex post. We show however, that competition for repayment among lenders may result in a sovereign debt that is excessively difficult to restructure in equilibrium. This inefficiency may be alleviated by a suitably designed bankruptcy regime that facilitates debt restructuring.

The volume contains articles based on presentations given at a conference hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance of Goethe University on October 27, 2011. Collective action clauses are an example of the typical dichotomy of financial regulation: While the problems are economic in nature, the solutions need to be implemented by law. The Institute for Law and Finance strives to bring together law and finance in order to foster a better mutual understanding of both disciplines and to improve the regulation of financial markets. Thus, the organizers are particularly pleased that eminent experts from the fields of law and finance agreed to participate in the event and to share their views on and experiences with collective action clauses. The presentations given at the conference have been updated in 2012 to reflect recent developments.

NULL

The first two decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a series of large-scale sovereign defaults and debt restructurings, in which sovereigns struggled to negotiate with recalcitrant bondholders, particularly hedge funds. Also, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 heralded a bleak financial outlook for many developing and emerging market countries, requiring sovereign debt restructuring in times of great macroeconomic uncertainty. Given the absence of a multilateral mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring equivalent to domestic corporate bankruptcy system, however, defaulted sovereigns often suffer from holdout litigation wrought by bondholders. This book proposes ways in which such legal actions could be regulated without the undue expense of bondholders' remedies by exploring the mechanism of balancing bondholder protection and respect for sovereign debt restructuring at various stages of litigation and arbitration proceedings.

An intelligent analysis of the dangers, opportunities, and consequences of global sovereign debt Sovereign debt is growing internationally at a terrifying rate, as nations seek to prop up their collapsing economies. One only needs to look at the sovereign risk pressures faced by Greece, Spain, and Ireland to get an idea of how big this problem has become. Understanding this dilemma is now more important than ever, that's why Robert Kolb has compiled Sovereign Debt. With this book as your guide, you'll gain a better perspective on the essential issues surrounding sovereign debt and default through discussions of national defaults, systemic risk, associated costs, and much more. Historical studies are also included to provide a realistic framework of reference. Contains up-to-date research and analysis on sovereign debt from today's leading practitioners and academics Details the dangers of defaults and their associated systemic risks Explores the past, present, and future of sovereign debt The repercussions of a national default are all-encompassing as global markets are intricately interwoven in the modern world. Sovereign Debt examines what it will take to overcome the challenges of this market and how you can deal with the uncertainty surrounding it.

The Eurozone crisis which started in spring 2010 as a Greek budget crisis has alerted Europeans that the issue of defaulting sovereigns is not one reserved just for the poor and poorest countries on this globe. The crisis painfully amplified that developed countries, too, might be hit by this phenomenon. To be sure, this insight is far from novel - the history of defaulting states reaches back into history for at least two millennia. And yet, lawyers have surprisingly abstained more or less completely from discussing this subject and developing possible solutions. Beginning with the Argentina crisis in 2001, this neglect began to vanish to a certain degree and this movement got some momentum in 2010 by the Eurozone crisis. The present book collects contributions from authors most of whom have participated in a conference on this issue in January 2012 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The presentations, thus, provide a unique overview of the present discussion both from an economic and legal perspective.