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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Author Anna Gelpern

1. Domestic and External Debt: The Doomed Quest for Equal Treatment

Author:
Brad Setser and Anna Gelpern
Publication Date:
05-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
"Equality" has the ring of a basic value, an incontrovertible virtue. In international finance, equal treatment is enshrined in treaties and contracts. Of all the equal treatment aspirations in finance, none seems more essential to a lawyer than equal treatment of creditors holding identical legal instruments: if one is to suffer a default, surely so should the others; restructuring options available to one must be open to all without regard to the creditor's identity. Yet in the world of sovereign debt, local and foreign investors buying the same paper rarely achieve what anyone would recognize as equal treatment.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance

2. What Bond Markets Can Learn from Argentina

Author:
Anna Gelpern
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Argentina has completed the largest and most complex sovereign bond restructuring in history. Before the debt exchange, it owed about $82 billion in principal and $20 billion in past due interest. Hundreds of thousands of creditors held 150 kinds of defaulted instruments issued in six currencies under the laws of eight jurisdictions. Creditors owed just over 76% of the total, or $62 billion, got $35 billion in new performing bonds. Other performing debt includes $40 billion in domestic and about $30 billion in multi-lateral obligations. Argentina left behind almost $25 billion in defaulted principal and interest.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America