Perspectives on Sovereign Debt Restructuring
On Wednesday 9, December 2015, a seminar was organized to discuss perspectives on sovereign debt restructuring at Leiden Law School. The seminar took place preceding the defence of the PhD dissertation of Yanying Li: “Inter-creditor Equity in Sovereign Debt Restructuring Towards the Establishment of a Multilateral Legal Framework’.
The seminar was opened by Professor Matthias Haentjens (Leiden Law School), chair of the seminar. The first speaker, Prof Ignacio Tirado, (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), elaborated on the international perspectives of sovereign debt restructuring. Ignacio Tirado shared some interesting insights on media in usage of information concerning sovereign debt restructuring in the European Union. Besides, he explained why economically suffering countries, such as Greece, were ‘saved’ with public money, instead of restructuring the debts. Many bondholders of Greece were private institutions from other EU Member States. A sovereign debt restructuring of a country such as Greece could cause major problems for those private investors. He further discussed reasons why high interest rates for insolvent countries are not the right manner lead them to solvency. Visit TRI Leiden for more on this seminar [LINK]. The other speakers were Kim Solberg, Ministry of Finance, The Hague, presenting some insights of negotiating restructuring souvereign debts, e.g. within the Paris Club, and Prof. Reinout Vriesendorp, providing an insolvency perspective to the topic.