MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentina's countdown to ninth default; some bondholders and IMF trust a last minute understanding
Argentina's Economy Minister Martin Guzman has given the country's biggest bondholders until this Friday to accept the offer he has put on the table to suspend payments until 2023 and reduce interest rates thereafter. One of the largest of those creditors, the investment management firm BlackRock, rejected Guzman's proposal and immediately presented a counteroffer. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rules“Most foreign bondholders rejected Argentina’s offer, according to people familiar with the matter, and participation was so low that the government preferred not to announce the results in a formal communiqué.“This is a pretty big fail,” said one investor.”
May 09th, 2020 - 01:54 am - Link - Report abuse +1Source: Financial Times
Word around here is that representation for more than 80 percent of the debt rejected the Defaultina offer.
I think that CACs call for approvals ranging from about 66 percent to 85 percent, depending on the individual bonds. And they are nowhere near getting that sort of acceptance from their wholly insincere offers.
Lenders were happy to buy Argentine bonds during Macri's term, not because of the president's “charms” but because his government did not hesitate to pay extra high interest rates in a low-rate world context.
May 09th, 2020 - 05:39 am - Link - Report abuse -1When borrowing, Macri set up a tight repayment schedule that the country would not be able to honour in any circumstances.
Now the chickens have come home to roost but Argentina's creditors refuse to accept president Alberto Fernandez' request for debtor-creditor shared responsibility and his refusal to starve Argentines in order to pay down the foreign debt in the set terms.
Fernandez has accepted to honour the foreign debt in spite of requests to audit it because part of the funds may have been improperly managed with large portions of the funds going to feed capital flight schemes.
So the ball is now in the bondholders' court.
@reeky
May 09th, 2020 - 12:48 pm - Link - Report abuse +1“Fernandez has accepted to honour the foreign debt ”
- No, Reeky. Argentina is already in default. And it's planning to deepen and broaden that default. When the FF lips are moving we know they are lying.
“So the ball is now in the bondholders' court.”
-- No, reeky. Wrong again as always. The bondholders' representatives have broadly rejected the insincere government offer. It is now up to the government to get serious.
“Macri set up a tight repayment schedule”
- Hence the 100-year bonds.
The Macri government took on new debt largely to pay old debts, many of which were increased or added during the KK years. .
The present Argentine government has refused to develop the conditions that would be necessary for the country to pay for anything.
Marti Llazo
May 09th, 2020 - 05:14 pm - Link - Report abuse +1Really this is just a strange new twist in the old joke about solving Argentina's financial problems...
...the old punchline has changed from the Virgin Maria descending from heaven with 100 billion dollars in cash...
...to now the IMF will give the Peronists a trillion dollars in debt forgiveness...
Both unlikely scenarios, and yet the two most PRACTICAL solutions for the Argentine black hole...
Today, there are actually owners of Chinese debt bonds issued from the Nationalist Chinese Government in the 1930's still seriously trying in court to collect their money...
So who knows? The pandemic is a heaven sent excuse from the heavens for the Peronists to squeal that they cannot meet their obligations...
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