By Andrea E. Kropp (Duke University School of Law)
Little attention has been paid to Italy’s bonds issued under New York law in discussions of Italy’s debt stock and how it will be restructured should the need arise. Because these New York law bonds have no collective action clauses and had been presumed to contain very creditor-friendly pari passu language, they appeared to be too difficult to restructure. As a result, it has been assumed that they would remain untouched, with an Italian debt restructuring impacting only local law bonds. No proposals had previously addressed how to restructure the New York law bonds because of this assumption. This article fills that gap by creating an actionable strategy to restructure the bonds and by demonstrating how the long-held presumption about the creditor-friendly pari passu language is flawed.
The article advocates for the use a set of exit amendments in an exchange offer effectuating the restructuring of the New York law bonds. These exit amendments will be used to secure execution and attachment immunity and to extend the period before creditors holding the non-exchanged bonds can accelerate. This set of exit amendments act to make the bonds quite unattractive to would-be holdout creditors. In addition, these creditors’ motivation to hold out is decreased even further because of the pari passu language in the indentures for the issuances. While the pari passu language in the bonds appeared to pose an insurmountable challenge to a restructuring, this presumption is grounded in a reading of the sales documents rather than the underlying Fiscal Agency Agreements that actually control the issuances. In contrast to the sales documents, the Fiscal Agency Agreements contain language that is much less creditor-friendly. Consequently, a recalcitrant creditor’s calculus in determining whether to hold out in a restructuring has changed significantly, making the exit amendment strategy a truly viable option.
The full article is available here.