Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Finance
Courts And Sovereigns In The Pari Passu Goldmines, Anna Gelpern
Courts And Sovereigns In The Pari Passu Goldmines, Anna Gelpern
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
U.S. federal court rulings against Argentina since 2012 have turned the pari passu clause in sovereign bond contracts into the most promising debt collection tool against immune governments since the days of gunboat diplomacy. The large literature on pari passu (“equal step” in Latin) assumes that the clause had not been used for enforcement before the late 1990s, and that it was first construed by a Belgian court in a case against Peru in the year 2000. The Belgian decision was criticized for wrongly concluding that pari passu promised ratable payment to all holders of Peru’s external debt. A decade …
Contract Hope And Sovereign Redemption, Anna Gelpern
Contract Hope And Sovereign Redemption, Anna Gelpern
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Sovereign immunity has served as a partial substitute for bankruptcy protection, but it has encouraged a minority of creditors to pursue unorthodox legal remedies with spillover effects far beyond the debtor-creditor relationship. The attempt to enforce Argentina’s pari passu clause in New York is an example of such a remedy, which relies primarily on collateral damage to other creditors and market infrastructure to obtain settlement from a debtor that would not pay. The District Court decision, now on appeal before the Second Circuit, may not make holding out more attractive in future restructurings – but it would make participation less …