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Full-Text Articles in Law
Targeted Subordination Of Official Sector Debt, Lee C. Buchheit, Mitu Gulati
Targeted Subordination Of Official Sector Debt, Lee C. Buchheit, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
If Greece’s debt is unsustainable, and most observers (including the IMF) seem to think it is, the country’s only source of funding will continue to be official sector bailout loans. Languishing for a decade or more as a ward of the official sector is undesirable from all perspectives. The Greeks bridle under what they see as foreign imposed austerity; the taxpayers who fund the official sector loans to Greece balk at the prospect of shoveling good money after bad. The question then is how to facilitate Greece’s ability to tap the private capital markets at tolerable interest rates. The IMF’s …
Pricing Sovereign Debt: Discretion V. Expropriation, Michael Bradley, Irving De Lira Salvatierra, Mitu Gulati
Pricing Sovereign Debt: Discretion V. Expropriation, Michael Bradley, Irving De Lira Salvatierra, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The Greek restructuring of March 2012 illustrates how non-price contract terms can have a significant effect on the pricing of sovereign debt. In the Greek restructuring, bonds governed by local law suffered NPV haircuts in the range of 60-75%, whereas those bonds governed by foreign law were paid in full and on time. Other contract parameters such as the currency in which the debt is denominated and the exchange on which it is listed can also affect the leeway a sovereign debtor has in dealing with its creditors. In general, we find that sovereigns with strong institutions and investor protections …
A Sovereign’S Cost Of Capital: Go Foreign Or Stay Local, Michael Bradley, Irving Arturo De Lira Salvatierra, Mitu Gulati
A Sovereign’S Cost Of Capital: Go Foreign Or Stay Local, Michael Bradley, Irving Arturo De Lira Salvatierra, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
A critical question faced by any sovereign seeking to raise funds in the bond market is whether to issue the debt under foreign or local parameters. This choice determines other key characteristics of any bond issue such as which banks, lawyers, and investors will be involved. Most important though, this decision involves a tradeoff between the sovereign retaining discretion in managing the issue and relinquishing control of the issue to third parties to prevent the sovereign from expropriating wealth from bondholders in the future. Based on a sample of 17,349 issuances by 117 sovereigns between 1990 and 2015, we investigate …
The Pricing Of Non-Price Terms In Sovereign Bonds: The Case Of The Greek Guarantees, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
The Pricing Of Non-Price Terms In Sovereign Bonds: The Case Of The Greek Guarantees, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
In March 2012, Greece conducted one of the biggest and most brutal sovereign debt restructurings ever, asking holders of Greek government bonds to take net present value haircuts of near 80 percent. Greece forced acquiescence to its terms from a large number of its bonds by using a variety of legal strong-arm tactics. With the vast majority of Greek bonds, the tactics worked. There were, however, thirty-six bonds guaranteed by the Greek state, which, because of the weakness of the underlying companies, were effectively obligations of the Greek state. Yet, on these thirty six bonds, even though Greece desperately needed …
Pricing Contract Terms In A Crisis: Venezuelan Bonds In 2016, Elena Carletti, Paolo Colla, Mitu Gulati, Steven Ongena
Pricing Contract Terms In A Crisis: Venezuelan Bonds In 2016, Elena Carletti, Paolo Colla, Mitu Gulati, Steven Ongena
Faculty Scholarship
As of this writing in June 2016, the markets are predicting Venezuela to be on the brink of default. On June 1, 2016, the 6 month CDS contract traded at about 7000bps which translates into a likelihood of default of over 90%. Our interest in the Venezuelan crisis is that its outstanding sovereign bonds have a unique set of contractual features that, in combination with its near-default status, have created a natural experiment. This experiment has the potential to shed light on one of the long standing questions that sits at the intersection of the fields of law and finance, …
The Sovereign-Debt Listing Puzzle, Elisabeth De Fontenay, Josefin Meyer, Mitu Gulati
The Sovereign-Debt Listing Puzzle, Elisabeth De Fontenay, Josefin Meyer, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The claim that stock exchanges perform certification and monitoring roles in securities offerings is pervasive in the legal and financial literatures. This article tests the validity of this “bonding hypothesis” in the sovereign-bond market—one of the oldest and largest securities markets in the world. Using data on sovereign-bond listings for the entire post-World War II period, we provide the first comprehensive report on sovereigns’ historical listing patterns. We then test whether a sovereign bond issue’s listing jurisdiction affects its yield at issuance, as the bonding hypothesis would predict. We find little evidence of bonding in today’s sovereign-debt market. Instead, we …