-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Camila Abbondanzieri, Default: the landmark court battle over Argentina's $100 billion debt restructuring, International Affairs, Volume 100, Issue 6, November 2024, Pages 2704–2705, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae247
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Is it possible to explain the lengthiest and by far the most polemical sovereign debt restructuring negotiation in history in a straightforward and rigorous way? Can such an account elucidate the divergent interests, motivations and expectations of contending actors in an objective manner? Gregory Makoff certainly tackles and overcomes these challenges. In Default, the author analyses Argentina's 15 years of tough sovereign debt restructuring negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the tortuous decade of litigations with holdout creditors. This case-study served as a turning-point for the dynamics of the international financial system, and Makoff explores it with great academic accuracy and a catchy style.
The author offers a masterful account of the set of intertwining fateful events that put the international financial system at risk from 2005 to 2016. These included a recurrence of defaults, misleading interpretations of legal clauses, erratic application of rules, several notorious lobbying efforts and political negotiations. Makoff depicts Argentina's case-study as a ‘disaster story’ (p. 3). At times, the narrative almost seems that of a novel: painstakingly, the author describes the gloomy atmosphere, the complex emotions of the characters involved in the negotiations and the furniture present in the different locations. Even the tense dialogues are meticulously recreated. Makoff has more than 20 years of professional and academic experience as a Wall Street banker and sovereign debt restructuring adviser. This background allows him to provide a clear-cut analysis of the complex and fierce battle between a country with a colossal debt, a politicized international organization (the IMF), and the several dispersed, anonymous and private creditors from all over the world. Makoff traces and examines the divergent styles, the strategies and the objectives of these actors throughout the chapters. The author relies on a wide variety of sources, which include public records and over 120 interviews with key players, allowing those involved to speak for themselves.
