English Abstract: The pari passu fallacy, first uncloaked in 2000, holds that when a sovereign borrower promises to maintain the equal ranking of a debt with the borrower's other senior indebtedness, it thereby implicitly promises to pay all of those debts on a ratable basis. In its 18-year life...

Issuing sovereign bonds in the international markets using a trust structure rather than a fiscal agency agreement conveys several benefits for the issuer and the holders of the bonds. Principal and interest payments received by a trustee will be less susceptible to attachment by third party...

The external debt of emerging market sovereign borrowers is now mainly in the form of bonds held by thousands of institutional and individual bondholders. Many of these bonds are governed by the law of the State of New York. As a matter of drafting convention, New York law-governed bonds for...

Bonds of the Russian Federation may soon slip into default. Once they do, the bondholders will be in a position to commence legal enforcement of the instruments and thereby add to the already considerable pressure on Mr. Putin to halt his invasion of Ukraine. Will they?

A meeting of international finance and insolvency experts was held on November 2, 2013 at the Annenberg House in Santa Monica, California. The meeting was co-hosted by the USC Law School and the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. The goal was to solicit the views of experts on the implications of...

The contingent liabilities of a sovereign, such as guarantees of the debts of third parties, can normally be kept off the balance sheet of the sovereign guarantor. That is their charm. As the debt to GDP ratios of many developed countries approach red-zone levels, contingent liabilities are...

English Abstract: Argentina is once again seeking to restructure its external debt. To facilitate this process, the country is proposing to use the state-of-the-art collective action clause that was included in the bonds Argentina started issuing in the Spring of 2016. When it uncloaked its...

Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But all such loans will involve risks and those risks occasionally materialize. When they do, is a creditor obliged to cooperate with its fellow...