Sovereign Bond Restructuring

The current approach to resolving sovereign debt crises does not work: sovereign debt restructurings come too late and address too little. Though unresolved debt crises impose enormous costs on societies, many recent restructurings have not been deep enough to provide the conditions for economic recovery (as illustrated by the Greek debt restructuring of 2012). And if the debtor decides not to accept the terms demanded by the creditors, finalizing a restructuring can be slowed by legal challenges (as illustrated by the recent case of Argentina, deemed as "the trial of the century"). A fresh start for distressed debtors is a basic principle of a well-functioning market economy, yet there is no international bankruptcy framework for sovereign debts. While this problem is not new, the United Nations and the global community are now willing to do something about it. Providing guidance for those who intend to take up reform, this book assesses the relative merits of various debt-restructuring proposals, especially in relation to the main deficiencies of the current nonsystem. With contributions by leading academics and practitioners, Too Little, Too Late reflects the overwhelming consensus among specialists on the need to find workable solutions.

This paper compares the restructuring of sovereign bonds with and without collective action clauses. One conclusion is that collective action clauses can allow efficient debt renegotiation in a formal model of sovereign debt renegotiation while unanimity rules offer incentives for opportunistic behavior by bondholders that leads to inefficient outcomes. With collective action clauses, the mutual gains from renegotiation can be internalized by bondholders so that the holders of each bond issue have incentives to participate in a collective debt restructuring. The analysis abstracts from transactions costs, and the last conclusion might well be sensitive to renegotiation and coordination costs.

In recent years there has been extensive discussion inside and outside the IMF on the need to develop a new approach to sovereign debt restructuring. Exploring ways to improve the sovereign debt restructuring process is a key part of the international community’s efforts to strengthen the architecture of the global financial system. This pamphlet by IMF First Deputy Managing Director Anne O.Krueger draws together the latest IMF thinking on the controversial issue in a single publication.

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.

Rejecting a common assumption in the sovereign debt literature, we document that creditor losses (“haircuts”) during sovereign restructuring episodes are asymmetric across debt instruments. We code a comprehensive dataset on instrument-specific haircuts for 28 debt restructurings with private creditors in 1999–2015 and find that haircuts on shorter-term debt are larger than those on debt of longer maturity. In a standard asset pricing model, we show that increasing short-run default risk in the run-up to a restructuring episode can explain the stylized fact. The data confirms the predicted relation between perceived default risk, bond prices, and haircuts by maturity.

This work examines the ongoing debate on resolving sovereign debt defaults and alleviating the debt burden of heavily indebted poor countries. Concentrating primarily on the period from the 1982 and focusing on money owed to both the public and the private sector, the volume examines the origins of debt crises, rescheduling tactics, and efforts to create a more enduring solution to the problem of coping with debt, as well as its efficacy. Policy recommendations are put forward for dealing with the onerous problem of debt default and rescheduling.

This paper studies the effect of sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors on growth during the period 1970-2010. We find that there are bad and good (or not so bad) debt restructurings for growth. While growth generally declines in the aftermath of a sovereign debt restructuring, agreements that allow countries to exit a default spell (final restructurings) are associated with improving growth. The impact can be significant. In general, three years after restructuring, growth is about 5 percent lower compared to countries that did not face restructuring over the same period. The exception is for final restructurings, which result in positive growth in the years immediately after the restructuring. Final restructurings tend to be better for growth because they reduce countries’ debt, with the strongest effect for countries that exit restructurings with relatively low debt levels.

This paper discusses the collective action problem in sovereign debt restructurings using a benchmark model of sovereign debt renegotiation. It considers the welfare comparison of outcomes sustainable under collective action clauses and under governing law that requires the unanimous agreement of bondholders to repayment revisions. One conclusion is that collective action clauses allow the implementation of an efficient renegotiation equilibrium for the model economy while unanimity rules provide incentives for opportunistic behavior by individual bondholders that leads to inefficient outcomes. The potential role for a multilateral sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (SDRM) is also discussed. It is argued that the establishment of an official international bankruptcy tribunal that collectively restructures all of a country's debt may not improve upon the universal adoption of collective action clauses for sovereign bond issues. With collective action clauses, mutual gains from collective renegotiation are internalized so that sufficient incentives exist for the private formation of bondholder councils to restructure various debt issues together. The approach abstracts from transactions costs, and the last conclusion might well be sensitive to renegotiation and coordination costs.