Argentina’s failure to pay bond interest to trigger default insurance settlement

Argentina’s failure to pay interest on its bonds is a credit event that will trigger settlement of $1bn of default insurance, according to the International Swaps & Derivatives Association.

The association’s determinations committee made the ruling in response to a question posed by Swiss bank UBS after the Argentine government missed a July 30 payment deadline on $539m of interest.

Argentina is the first nation to trigger default swaps since Greece restructured its debt in 2012. The ruling was seen by traders as complicated because Argentina made the required payment to the trustee for the bond, Bank of New York Mellon.

The bank said yesterday that a US judge’s ruling bars it from passing the money to bondholders without a resolution of the nation’s dispute with hedge funds, led by Elliott Management, which sued the nation for $1.5bn.

“From the perspective of Argentina, you could argue they provided the payments and the transfer mechanism doesn’t work,” said Jochen Felsenheimer, the Munich-based founder of XAIA Investment GmbH, which manages €2.8bn in credit funds.

“From the investor standpoint, you can argue they didn’t get the coupon.”

Following the credit event ruling, the trades will be settled at an auction, the association said in a statement.

The process sets a value for the defaulted bonds and then swap sellers pay buyers face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent determined at the auction administered by Markit Group Ltd and Creditex Group Inc. The association’s determinations committee was formed in 2009 and makes binding decisions for the market on whether contracts can be triggered. The 15-member group includes representatives from Bank of America Corp, Elliott Management, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

There were 2,652 contracts covering $1bn of Argentina bonds as of July 25, according to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp, compared with $3bn for Greek bonds in 2012.

Bloomberg