International law on sovereign defaults is underdeveloped because States have largely refrained from adjudicating disputes arising out of public debt. The looming new wave of sovereign defaults is likely to shift dispute resolution away from national courts to international tribunals and transform the current regime for restructuring sovereign debt. Michael Waibel assesses how international tribunals balance creditor claims and sovereign capacity to pay across time. The history of adjudicating sovereign defaults internationally over the last 150 years offers a rich repository of experience for future cases: US state defaults, quasi-receiverships in the Dominican Republic and Ottoman Empire, the Venezuela Preferential Case, the Soviet repudiation in 1917, the League of Nations, the World War Foreign Debt Commission, Germany's 30-year restructuring after 1918 and ICSID arbitration on Argentina's default in 2001. The remarkable continuity in international practice and jurisprudence suggests avenues for building durable institutions capable of resolving future sovereign defaults.
This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.
The modern tendency to restrict international arbitration to matters of commerce and investment is succumbing to a renewed recognition of the original impetus for dispute resolution by arbitration – i.e., matters of public international law, most importantly the settlement of disputes that pose a threat of international conflict. Recent developments suggest a renaissance of public international arbitration, most clearly manifested in the present flourishing of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), the oldest existing dispute settlement institution in international law. As the calls for the development of new and more appropriate methods for dispute settlement in international law increased during the 1990s, the PCA undertook a structural reform and is today a vital forum for dispute settlement, with scores of arbitrations currently pending under its auspices. This book – the most comprehensive study of the institution to date, covering its history, its present status, and its future prospects – proves the PCA’s contemporary relevance within the international dispute settlement framework. Among aspects of the PCA’s work covered are the following: how public international arbitration functions in comparison to other means available for dispute settlement in international law; the PCA’s historical contributions to the current dispute settlement framework; arbitrations between a state and a non-state actor that are in whole or in part governed by public international law; the fields in which public international arbitration plays a revived role; the PCA’s present-day institutional framework and its current activities; the prospects for public international arbitration and the PCA in the dispute settlement framework of the twenty-first century; and proposals to increase the PCA’s activities in future and to sustain and enhance the institution’s ongoing revitalization. A very useful Practitioner’s Guide provides an overview of the PCA’s various services and the best means of accessing them, along with a summary of the key provisions of the new PCA Arbitration Rules 2012. For lawyers who are involved in dispute resolution proceedings, there can be little doubt about the PCA’s relevance. This book is at once an academic work, indispensable for scholars of the institution, and a practical guide that will be a required addition to the libraries of counsel, arbitrators, and others involved in dispute resolution proceedings conducted at the PCA.
In response to continuing global financial turmoil, the UN Conference for Trade and Development has produced a set of principles to govern future sovereign financing. This book expands on these principles from a legal and economic perspective to analyse how sovereign financing can be regulated to prevent similar debt crises from occurring again.
The book seeks to investigate problems relating to the increased interaction between national and international courts, which have resulted in the litigation of the same legal issues before national and international judicial bodies: What is the proper order of the proceedings? Should national and international proceedings take place concurrently? What effect, if any, should be given to decisions of national court in proceedings before an international court and vice versa? In particular, the book advocates the use of judicial comity as a method for mitigating jurisdictional tensions between national and international courts.
Re-imagining sovereign debt examines the extent to which sovereign debtors’ contractual obligations may be honoured where the socio-economic rights of their citizens face clear danger of non-realisation. It critiques the foundational legal paradigm that influences and shapes the substance of the sovereign debt regime. In doing this, the author employs legal theory to show the inadequacies of the regime in terms of its failure to embrace the dynamism of sovereign debt which he characterises as a debt with a complex mix of public-private elements, hybridity of norms and multiplicity of interests beyond the two-sided creditor-debtor matrix. By locating socio-economic rights in all critical phases of the regime, the author shows that the recurring circles of debt crises are linked to the continuing influence of the private law paradigm. The book offers a fresh perspective to re-imagine sovereign debt using insights from transnational legal theorists and advocates prioritising socio-economic rights considerations in debt contracting, restructuring and adjudication through a more concrete recognition of creditors’ responsibilities. Re-imagining sovereign debt will interest lawyers, policymakers, diplomats, scholars and researchers interested in the law, history and politics of sovereign debt.
Global banking and finance is a complex and specialized field with sector-specific investment forms, subject to distinctive legal and regulatory frameworks and unique types of political risk. This comprehensive guide to international investment protection in the finance and banking sector, written by acknowledged experts in the field of investor-State arbitration, provides the first in-depth discussion of how international investment law applies to investors and investments in the sector. Featuring expert guidance on the key legal protections for cross-border banking and finance investments, with complete and up-to-date coverage of investor-State cases, the analysis crystallizes a set of field-specific legal principles for the sector. In particular, the authors address the following practical aspects of investment protection in the banking and finance sector: how sector-specific forms of investment, such as loans and derivatives, impact the dispute resolution process; types of political risk that cross-border investments in the sector are likely to encounter; distinctive adverse sovereign measures that underlie disputes in the sector, including those from sovereign debt defaults and banking sector bailouts; specific treaty provisions, such as jurisdictional carve-outs and targeted exclusions; remedies available for violations of international investment protections; how monetary damages may be assessed for injury to banking and finance sector investments; the scope of financial services chapters included in certain free trade agreements; the protections available under domestic foreign investment laws; and alternative sources of protection such as political risk insurance and investment contracts. International disputes practitioners and academics, in-house counsel in the finance and banking industries, and arbitrators addressing banking and finance disputes will welcome this book for its practical guidance. With strategies for investors as well as for sovereign States to navigate the intricacies of the investment protection system, the authors’ comprehensive analysis will help ensure appropriate international protection for banking and finance sector investments, both when establishing investments and when resolving disputes. The book lays the groundwork for the future consolidation of international investment protection as a critical tool to manage the political risk confronting global banking and finance.
The book sheds light on the perhaps most important legal conundrum in the context of sovereign debt restructuring: the holdout creditor problem. Absent an international bankruptcy regime for sovereigns, holdout creditors may delay or even thwart the efficient resolution of sovereign debt crises by leveraging contractual provisions and, in an increasing number of cases, by seeking to enforce a debt claim against the sovereign in courts or international tribunals. Following an introduction to sovereign debt and its restructuring, the book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the holdout creditor problem in the context of the two largest sovereign debt restructuring operations in history: the Argentine restructurings of 2005 and 2010 and the 2012 Greek private sector involvement. By reviewing numerous lawsuits and arbitral proceedings initiated against Argentina and Greece across a dozen different jurisdictions, it distils the organizing principles for ongoing and future cases of sovereign debt restructuring and litigation. It highlights the different approaches judges and arbitrators have adopted when dealing with holdout creditors, ranging from the denial of their contractual right to repayment on human rights grounds to leveraging the international financial infrastructure to coerce governments into meeting holdouts’ demands. To this end, it zooms in on the role the governing law plays in sovereign debt restructurings, revisits the contemporary view on sovereign immunity from suit and enforcement in the international debt context, and examines how creditor rights are balanced with the sovereign’s interest in achieving debt sustainability. Finally, it advances a new genealogy of holdouts, distinguishing between official and private sector holdouts and discussing how the proliferation of new types of uncooperative creditors may affect the sovereign debt architecture going forward. While the book is aimed at practitioners and scholars dealing with sovereign debt and its restructuring, it should also provide the general reader with the understanding of the key legal issues facing countries in debt distress. Moreover, by weaving economic, financial, and political considerations into its analysis of holdout creditor litigation and arbitration, the book also speaks to policymakers without a legal background engaged in the field of international finance and economics.
Conventional wisdom holds that all nations must repay debt. Regardless of the legitimacy of the regime that signs the contract, a country that fails to honor its obligations damages its reputation. Yet should today's South Africa be responsible for apartheid-era debt? Is it reasonable to tether postwar Iraq with Saddam Hussein's excesses? Rethinking Sovereign Debt is a probing analysis of how sovereign debt continuity--the rule that nations should repay loans even after a major regime change, or else expect consequences--became dominant. Odette Lienau contends that the practice is not essential for functioning capital markets, and demonstrates its reliance on absolutist ideas that have come under fire over the last century. Lienau traces debt continuity from World War I to the present, emphasizing the role of government officials, the World Bank, and private markets in shaping our existing framework. Challenging previous accounts, she argues that Soviet Russia's repudiation of Tsarist debt and Great Britain's 1923 arbitration with Costa Rica hint at the feasibility of selective debt cancellation. Rethinking Sovereign Debt calls on scholars and policymakers to recognize political choice and historical precedent in sovereign debt and reputation, in order to move beyond an impasse when a government is overthrown.
