Hedge Funds Sue to Get Argentine Bond Payment in London
A group of hedge funds, including George Soros’s Quantum Partners and J. Kyle Bass’s Hayman Capital, is seeking a 226 million euro interest payment on Argentine bonds from Bank of New York Mellon that was blocked by a United States judge last month.
In a lawsuit filed in London against Bank of New York, the trustee handling Argentina’s bond payments, the hedge funds contend that the bank’s London unit must release money that was deposited by Argentina for its euro-denominated bondholders. The money was part of a $539 million interest payment that Judge Thomas P. Griesa of the Federal District Court in Manhattan prevented the trustee from paying last month.
The latest lawsuit, filed last Thursday, poses a challenge to the scope of Judge Griesa’s ruling and will further complicate what has been a long and drawn out battle between the government of Argentina and a group of New York hedge funds that have waged a court battle that has lasted years.
This group of hedge funds, led by a unit of Paul E. Singer’s Elliott Capital, are seeking more than $1.5 billion in payments and interest on bonds that defaulted in 2001. Argentina offered investors in the defaulted bonds new, discounted bonds through two restructurings in 2005 and 2010, but the group owns bonds that were never part of the exchange. Argentina ignored these “holdout” bondholders’ claims for years, making interest payments only on its discounted exchange bonds.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/hedge-funds-sue-to-get-argentine-bond-payment-in-london/
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