Are bonds both a liability and an asset of the borrower?

I have a special interest in this question because that was the topic of the first post on my blog way back in 2005. Five centuries after Luca Pacioli wrote the first text book on double entry accounting, this issue remains unresolved, and smart litigants are still seeking to attach the bonds issued by the debtor to recover their claims. In 2005, it was Argentina; in 2017, it is Venezuela (hat tip Credit Slips).

Twelve years ago, Argentina was exchanging its old bonds for new bonds as part of its infamous debt restructuring. Some hedge funds moved to seize the old bonds that Argentina had accepted for the exchange on the ground that the surrendered bonds were assets of Argentina which could be sold in the market to satisfy the claims of the hedge funds. Argentina of course argued that the bonds belonged to the tendering holders, and that they could not be Argentina’s assets and liabilities at the same time. The federal appeals court in New York did not decide the legal question, but simply upheld the trial court’s ruling in favour of Argentina on the ground that the trial judge overseeing the overall debt exchange had broad discretion in the matter. Anna Gelpern provides more details in this paper (page 4).

If Argentina’s debt restructuring was a mess, Venezuela promises to be even messier if and when that country gets to that stage. What is happening now are merely some skirmishes before Venezuela defaults and the serious litigation begins. Buchheit and Gulati wrote in a recent paper:

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was a large undertaking. Restructuring Venezuela’s public sector debt will be a very large undertaking.

Early this year, Venezuela issued $5 billion in new bonds to a state owned entity to help raise cash needed for essential imports (“Venezuela issues $5bn in bonds as it seeks cash to ease shortages”, Financial Times, January 3, 2017). In June, Venezuela engaged a Chinese securities firm, Haitong, to resell these bonds reportedly at a steep discount of more than 70% (“Venezuela Discounts $5 Billion in Bonds”, Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2017). Soon, a Canadian firm, Crystallex, obtained a restraining order against Haitong, as a first step towards attaching the bonds. (“Crystallex Moves Closer To Collecting $1.2B Venezuela Award”, Law360, July 17, 2017). Perhaps, this time, the courts will actually decide this question as to whether a debtor’s bonds can be treated as its assets and attached by the creditors.

Posted at 7:05 pm IST on Mon, 7 Aug 2017         permanent link

Categories: bond markets, law, sovereign risk

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