Argentina will continue repaying its debt on the same terms, the country’s economy minister said on Sunday after Buenos Aires lost an appeal in a US court in its case against unhappy creditors.
On Friday, a US appeals court in New York ordered Buenos Aires to pay US$1.47 billion to hedge funds holding its defaulted bonds, quashing an appeal by Buenos Aires against an initial judgment last year.
“We will continue to pay [the debt] as we have been until now, under the same terms,” Argentine Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino told state news agency Telam.
The ruling was “an attempt to bring the country back to the situation it was in in 2001,” Lorenzino said.
Faced with bankruptcy in 2001, Argentina reached a deal with almost all of its private creditors to restructure its debt at a discount of nearly 70 percent in two phases, in 2005 and 2010, for a total of US$90 billion.
The US court endorsed the original decision that Argentina must compensate two hedge funds 100 percent of the value of defaulted Argentine government bonds they hold, even though the two declined to take part in a restructuring of the debt.
The funds in question are NML Capital and Aurelius.
Given that Buenos Aires had requested the US Supreme Court to weigh in on the case, the court said it would hold off on enforcing the decision to force Buenos Aires to repay the debts.
Buenos Aires has argued that bondholders who took part in the 2005 and 2010 restructuring of nearly US$100 billion of defaulted debt, which forced on them huge writedowns of the face value of the bonds, would now be able to lay claim as well for 100 percent compensation.
That could overwhelm the country’s finances and lead to a fresh default, Argentina has claimed.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure