The Banker’s October cover story shows Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez dressed in boxing gear and on the ropes – an illustration of the country’s plight following a New York court ruling that led to a technical default on its sovereign debt.
But, things move fast in the debt markets and already Kazakhstan has issued a dollar-denominated sovereign bond with clauses that should prevent a repeat performance in the unlikely event that the country defaults. Chief among these is a clause binding all investors to decisions made by a 75% majority – in Argentina’s case 90% of investors accepted 70% losses in the restructurings that followed the country’s $100m default back in 2001.
