Si ha paura che non si arrivi a 75%....
March 2, 2012, 5:00 pm
Greek Official Warns Debt Holdouts
By
LANDON THOMAS JR.MADRID — For the hedge funds who are looking to sue Greece instead of taking a 75 percent loss on their bonds, the head of Greece’s debt management agency has some blunt advice: Think twice before racking up those big legal bills.
“There is just no money for holdouts,” said Petros Christodoulou, who has been at the forefront of Greece’s debt restructuring process since it began last summer. “We are prepared for legal challenges but the risk here is that people are trying to be too smart.”
On Thursday, investors holding 177 billion euros worth of local law bonds must inform Greece whether they want to swap their old ones for new ones and take a 75 percent loss in the process.
Analysts now believe that the deal will get done as more than 65 percent of holders — Greek banks and pension funds as well as large European banks — are likely to switch their old bonds for a package of new English law Greek bonds and securities issued by Europe’s rescue fund.
And, as Greece and its financial backers have insisted on a near universal participation, it is expected that Greece will deploy its new collective action clauses to compel those who decline the offer to take a loss as well.
Mr. Christodoulou declined to comment on whether the clause would be activated but he did underline that the consequences of a failed deal are dire not just for Greece but for bondholders too.
The alternative, he said, “is too dire to contemplate.” He added that if this deal failed, the next offer bond holders would get would be far inferior, lacking the incentives that the current offer has.
Mr. Christodoulou said that it was too early to get a sense of what the participation rate would be but that he said he was confident that at the end of the day enough investors would agree to the deal to reach the target.
“We are targetting near universal participation,” he said. “We have spent a lot of time on this — now we are ready to implement it.
Nevertheless numerous hedge funds have been accumulating a range of Greek bonds that are governed by foreign law in the hopes of of making a legal challenge. These securities range from bonds issued by Greece’s near bankrupt railway firm to so-called pharma bonds — bonds issued by the Greek government and paid to cash-starved Greek pharmaceutical companies in place of cash
Law firms like Bingham McCutchen have been soliciting hedge funds, asking that they form a consortium to challenge Greece by accumulating enough of these types of bonds so that they might be able to block the deal and perhaps receive near full payment from the Greek government.
The rationale being that Greece would rather pay off these investors as opposed to having to fight them in court.
But Mr. Christodoulou sees little chance of this happening.
“We feel we need to honor the long term investors who will participate in the deal,” he said. “It is not in anyone’s interest to see them take a 70 percent haircut while others get par.”
So far, there is no sign that large vulture funds like Elliott Management are willing to take on the ample resources of the European Union by challenging Greece in court. Lawyers and investors say that until now the types of hedge funds that have been taking up positions are small and lack the resources for a drawn out legal battle.
Nevertheless, prospective litigants may be heartened by a recent decision by the United States District Court in Manhattan that found in favor of a fund controlled by Elliott, NML Capital.
NML has for a long time been pursuing Argentina, which defaulted on $100 billion worth of debt in 2002, in court arguing that core a bond contract principal that states that all investors receive equal treatment was violated when the country cut a deal with some investors who were willing to take a haircut while Elliott held out.
In the ruling, dated Feb. 23, Judge Thomas Griesa ordered that when Argentina makes interest payments to investors that participated in previous debt restructuring deals, the country shall “concurrently or in advance make a ratable payment to NML.”
While investors have not yet been able to extract large sums of money from Argentina, legal experts say that ruling is certain to be closely studied by those who that are thinking of pursuing a similar case against Greece.