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CREDITOR COORDINATION IN DEBT RESTRUCTURINGS: REPORT ON THE EXPERT ROUNDTABLE “BRINGING ALL CREDITORS ON BOARD!”
The first debt restructurings in countries of the Global South following the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that the coordination of the many different creditors hinders a rapid and sustainable solution of debt crises in view of the significantly more complex creditor profiles. A pattern can be seen both in the…
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Out now: Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2024
Compared to the years during the COVID-19 crisis, in some countries of the Global South the debt situation has slightly eased. For most countries there, however, the debt situation remains tense. In 130 of the 152 countries surveyed in the Global South, the debt situation is at least slightly critical;…
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THE WINNER TAKES ALL – THRICE!? SRI LANKA’S RESTRUCTURING WITH PRIVATE CREDITORS
After Sri Lanka defaulted in spring 2022, the country entered into debt restructuring negotiations with its creditors. The majority of Sri Lanka's private creditors then joined together in a creditors' committee and submitted a restructuring proposal to Sri Lanka in October 2023. In the legal dispute with Hamilton Reserve Bank,…
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SHADY CHARACTERS IN THE LEGAL DISPUTE BETWEEN SRI LANKA AND HAMILTON RESERVE BANK
A lawsuit between the Sri Lankan government and the Hamilton Reserve Bank has been ongoing since June 2022 and was last paused. After the moratorium granted by the court expired at the end of February 2024, Sri Lanka has again applied for the trial to be suspended for a further…
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UKRAINE: OPTIONS FOR THE END OF THE DEBT MORATORIUM IN 2024
In November 2023, the Ukrainian government adopted its budget for 2024. Around USD 40 billion in external support is needed to keep state functions running. Financing could also be made more difficult by the resumption of debt servicing to private pre-war bondholders ("legacy bondholders"). When the debt moratorium ends in…
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New Analysis: Understanding IMF Debt Sustainability Analyses.
The IMF is a powerful gatekeeper for financing and debt relief and sets the macroeconomic parameters and incentives for governments on how to deal with a critical external debt situation. At the centre of this are the IMF’s debt sustainability analyses. With a de facto monopoly on these analyses comes…
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New Focus Paper: “Debt crisis not yet bad enough” – How creditors downplay the need to act
136 out of 152 countries in the Global South are at least slightly critically indebted, 40 of them very critically. Without urgently needed reforms of the international debt architecture, the latest wave of debt crises in the Global South cannot be solved. The leaders of the World Bank and the…
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Ecuador – Credit Suisse: a debt for nature swap is something different
The purchase of $1.63 billion in Ecuadorian debt on the secondary market by the major Swiss bank Credit Suisse (CS) received considerable media attention in early May. Due to the country's critical economic situation, Ecuador's government bonds, which mature between 2030 and 2040, were trading between 35.5 and 53.25 percent…
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Out now: Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2023
Despite the slight recovery of the global economic situation in 2021 before the beginning of the Ukraine war, the debt situation in the majority of countries in the Global South remains tense. While policy-makers are calling for the improvement of debt relief procedures, the interests of different creditor groups are…
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In Search for Consensus. A Sovereign Insolvency Procedure as a Way Out of the Debt Crisis?
“The issue of sustainable debt is probably one of the biggest challenges we're currently facing. We are talking about fighting climate change, we're talking about global challenges such as migration, digital transformation. And when certain countries are facing an unsustainable level of debt, we really need to have a new…
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