Tuesday, February 16, 2016

'Vultures' granted extra day to respond to Argentina's injunctions demand

US District Judge Thomas Griesa.

Hedge funds litigating against Argentina in the United States over the country’s defaulted bonds will have until Friday to respond to the government’s demand to have orders restricting it from servicing its restructured debts vacated, US District Judge Thomas Griesa ruled today.

Argentina's lawyers said vacating the injunctions would allow it to tap global capital markets to fund the settlements and to remove an incentive for the remaining suing bondholders to not settle on "reasonable terms."

Today, Griesa approved a request by NML Capital and Aurelius to take the deadline to February 19, originally set for February 18.

Two out of six leading bondholders have already accepted Argentina’s debt payment offer which represents a 27.5 percent to 30 percent discount for creditors who filed claims of about $9 billion.

But others, including leading Aurelius and Elliott Management's NML Capital Ltd, have not yet said if they would agree to take the deal.

They are among creditors who spurned Argentina's 2005 and 2010 debt restructurings, which resulted in 92 percent of its defaulted debt being swapped and investors being paid less than 30 cents on the dollar.