Argentina Sovereign Debt Case Study – 2001

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Argentina -Sovereign Debt Exchange Transactions 2001 Anatomy

In order to include Distressed Sovereign Restructured Debt as an asset sub-class within ActiveAllocator we examined the past 30 sovereign default crisis with 270 bonds in multiple emerging markets including Argentine, Bulgaria, Colombia, Ecuador, Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine,  Venezuela etc. Given the large variation of returns between crisis episodes, aggregating statistics from these events is a spurious exercise; the sample size is much too small, restructurings idiosyncratic, haircuts and losses vary widely as well as heterogeneous debt security-level characteristics.

Our approach is to parse the anatomy of each restructured deal – restructuring defined as a distressed debt exchange in which creditors receive instruments with less-favorable terms than the original issues -beginning with an examination of the original debt offer documents as well as the specifics of each deal.

The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2020  reports” Argentina Bonds Rise On New Debt Deal ” : Average recoveries around $53.50, swaps existing bonds to newer lower interest paying, delayed maturity..

Earlier on May 23,  2020 The Wall Street Journal reported  ” Argentina Defaults on Sovereign Debt Amid Coronavirus Crisis – The country is struggling with economic contraction, runaway inflation and a hard-currency squeeze”

Argentina defaulted on sovereign debt for the ninth time in its history, as Latin America’s third-biggest economy grapples with a new cycle of economic contraction, runaway inflation and a hard-currency squeeze exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The cash-strapped country officially entered into default on Friday after failing to make a $500 million interest payment on foreign debt. The…

We examine here the  anatomy of historical instances of Argentina Debt Exchange Transactions — February and June 2001

–Argentina Reverse Dutch Auction exchange – February 2001 when the Republic successfully exchanged over $8.0 billion of international and domestic securities

–Argentina “Mega Debt Exchange”—June 2001 when the Republic successfully executed a $29.5 billion debt exchange of 46 eligible international and domestic debt securities

Author: Sameer_Jain

Partner. Sameer Jain is founder of FinTech ActiveAllocator.com, the world’s first portal that seamlessly integrates traditional, illiquid and alternative investments within portfolios. Prior to this he was Chief Economist & Managing Director at AR Capital. Before that he headed Investment Content & Strategy at UBS Alternative Investments. At UBS, he served as a non-voting member of the Wealth Management Research investment committee, and as a capital allocator was responsible for all illiquid investing including fund manager selection and due diligence across the platform. Prior to UBS he headed product development & investment research at Citigroup Alternative Investments that managed over $75 billion of alternative investments across hedge funds, managed futures, private equity, credit structures, infrastructure and real estate. Here he led a team that developed proprietary models for portfolio strategy and asset allocation with alternative investments, provided investment support and research to pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, endowments as well as internal clients including Citi Private Bank. Before this he was with Cambridge Alternative Investments and SunGard (System Access) where he travelled to over 80 countries for work across Europe, Asia, Middle-East and Africa. He has written over 30 academic and practitioner articles on alternative investments with thousands of downloads at SSRN, presented at over a hundred industry conferences and has coauthored a book, Active Equity Management. Mr. Jain has multiple degrees in engineering, management, public administration and policy and is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He is a recipient of the Alfred Sloan Fellowship and subsequently was a Fellow of Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a year. He holds Series 7 and 66 securities licenses. View all posts by Sameer_Jain