- The Greek government
- One or two French banks
- The Finnish government
- Spanish banks, UK banks, hmm a few banks really
These are just some of the world-class institutions Joseph has managed to annoy with stuff he’s dug up over the years. He joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010.
Joseph likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
He doesn’t have a finance background.
ROUND-UP
Quote of the day: “I’m not going to give that any oxygen” — Ben Bernanke on the trillion-dollar coin at Monday’s University of Michigan speech. Read more
Flashes from Bloomberg:
*DELL IS SAID TO BE IN TALKS TO GO PRIVATE Read more
Well, it’s a revolution! Apparently.
This is Goldman’s first report on its money market funds to disclose daily net asset values (h/t Tracy): Read more
Portrait of a returning peripheral sovereign, encore:
Speaking today, NTMA Chief Executive John Corrigan said that Ireland had made considerable progress in its phased return to the markets over the past year and, with the success of yesterday’s €2.5 billion syndicated bond sale, had eliminated the “funding cliff” presented by a €11.9 billion bond repayment due in mid January 2014. The NTMA intends to step up its re-engagement with the market during 2013 so that Ireland is positioned to successfully exit the EU/IMF programme. Its working plan is to raise €10 billion, subject to market conditions, of which one quarter has been achieved with yesterday’s bond sale. Mr Corrigan also said the NTMA would continue its regular auctions of short-term Bills, which recommenced in July 2012, with the first 2013 auction scheduled for Thursday 17 January. Read more
ROUND-UP
US stocks edged down for a second day. The S&P 500 closed down 0.3 per cent at 1,457.15. Read more
You know them when you see them, obvs.
Applying that rule of thumb… Read more
If you thought the Argentine pari passu bond saga had taken the holiday dead period off — then you don’t know the pari passu saga very well.
Some interesting developments squeezed in before the new year… Read more
Take one warship rescued from asset seizure by bond holdouts.
Add swelling music, defiant rhetoric by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the national flag stirring in the Atlantic breeze, and messages home from crewmen who remained on board while the dispute played out in a Ghanaian port and Hamburg tribunal… Read more
And so an Argentine training warship is free to sail off into the sunset, and out of the clutches of bond holdouts.
Quite the rally in T-bills… continuing apace on Friday, now that the Transaction Account Guarantee has become increasingly, quietly, talked about in the past tense ahead of a year-end renewal deadline.
(Chart of the 1-year T-bill, click to enlarge. The yield on a T-bill maturing in January was close to zero at pixel time) Read more
A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, inside a pari passu clause.
Here are some terms from Italy’s 2015 US dollar bond, which it issued under New York law in 2010. It is a pari passu clause, even though you won’t find the words ‘pari passu’. Read more
All it takes — might not be very much. From the Bank of England Act 1998: Read more
Greece paid up to 40 cents in the euro for one of the bond in its buyback. Average price: 33.8 cents in the euro.
Or rather wants to pay. It has “advised… official creditors” that it wants another €1.29bn in EFSF notes to purchase all of the bonds tendered, up from the original €10bn.
The results, in table form via this release (click to enlarge): Read more
Yep, this is a Greece post in a series on Argentina and the pari passu saga.
We’ll explain. Read more
Click for details. The Greek PSI bond buyback now closes at 12pm London time on December 11.
Now, is this supposed to be a veiled threat if investors choose not to tend their bonds? From the Greek debt office chief, Stelios Papadopoulos: Read more
Much better than expected (85k), but with downward revisions to September and October.
The jobless rate, now at 7.7 per cent, remains around a four-year low. Read more
On October 26, the Second Circuit chucked out Argentina’s appeal against having to pay bond holdouts, having had “little difficulty concluding” that the defaulted debt’s dusty, old — but contractually standard — pari passu clause demanded rateable payment. Read more
No explanation had been given by S&P at pixel time. [Update: it's pasted below the jump.] But the situation is pretty clear: Greece’s “voluntary” buyback of the PSI bonds is being carried out in distressed conditions (ie it will otherwise lose eurozone financial support). Read more
ROUND-UP
US stocks fell, insert fiscal cliff explanation here. The S&P 500 fell 0.2 per cent to close at 1,407.05. Gold fell below $1,700 a troy ounce (Financial Times). Read more
And so ends a little saga-within-a-saga in the Argentine bond holdout case (but one which shed interesting light on the various sides’ litigating strategies). Read more
Wednesday’s annual charity day at Exotix, the frontier markets brokerage. To that end…
Gabriel Sterne, Exotix analyst, has presented clients with his top ten eurozone crisis quotes of 2012. Of course Sterne gave the answers to who said them, but we thought it might be fun for readers to try and guess. We’ll reveal the answers later. Read more
ROUND-UP
A subpar ISM saddled stocks. The S&P 500 closed down 0.47 per cent at 1,409.46. The Institute for Supply Management survey of manufacturing fell to 49.5 in November, below forecasts of 51.3, and the first reading below 50 since July (Financial Times). Read more
UPDATE – Beyond the to-and-fro about stays and the Second Circuit in the post below…
Bank of New York Mellon has filed for leave to appeal Judge Griesa’s revised order for Argentina to pay (and for third parties not to assist it in not paying – including BNY). This is a significant move given the role of BNY enabling payments to restructured holders as their trustee. It was kind of stuck in the middle over the dispute between Argentina, holdouts and restructured bondholders, and had last asked courts to clarify its obligations. This filing marshals indenture trust law, Rule 65(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and “dangerous precedent” to seek to challenge the merits of Judge Griesa’s ruling itself. Read more
ROUND-UP
The Fiscal See-Saw. The S&P 500 closed up 0.4 per cent at 1,415 in choppy trading (Financial Times). Read more
Latin American country tells creditors they can’t be serious…
While acknowledging that the Committee’s counter-proposal provides a degree of short-term cash flow relief, the GoB considers it to be wholly incompatible with its objective of placing the country’s debt burden on a sustainable footing – a goal that the Committee itself has indicated it is committed to at various stages. The GoB believes that the counter-proposal ignores Belize’s high overall debt levels, and that it amounts to little more than a short-term fix not dissimilar to the 2007 exercise. Read more
Looks like those emergency bondholder briefs had some effect on the Second Circuit…
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the motion by the Exchange Bondholder Group for leave to intervene as interested non-parties for the purpose of appealing orders entered by the district court on 11/21/12 and for the purpose of seeking a stay pending appeal is GRANTED. Read more
