Argentina agreed on Wednesday to pay $190 million on settlement with seven holdout creditors to close 15 years of litigation over its faulted bonds.
According to Reuters, the U.S. court appointed mediator in the case, Daniel Pollack, said in a statement that the Wednesday's settlement brings the total amount of settlements agreed in principle with U.S. creditors to more than $6.4 billion.
Pollack said in the statement that the additional settlements were reached with institutions and invividuals including BN Paribas $52.4 million, GMO (Boston) $119 million, Carlo Regazzoni $1.7 million, Elazar Romano $11.3 million, Grazia Valenti $172,000, La Societa Ymus SRL $375,000 and Tomaso Zappoli Thyrion $5.2 million, Buenos Aires Herald reports.
Argentina has been in a long-standing debt since 2001. The country was in desperate need of fresh capital because the legal cases blocked it from accessing international capital markets. It defaulted on nearly $100 billion debt in 2001.
In early 2002, the U.S. based hedge funds sued for full payment on sovereign bonds defaulted. According to Business Times, the hedge funds bought up the defaulted debt at steep discounts aiming to recover the full value. In 2012, the New York federal district court ruled in their favour. Since then, the country has been mostly locked out of global capital markets.
President Mauricio Macri, who was elected in November, is tasked with reviving the country's economy. President Macri has vowed to pay off the creditors and move forward.
The country reached $1.35 billion agreement on Feb 2 to settle with group of Italian investors, as many as 50,000 bondholders, who held defaulted bonds. It agreed on Feb 5 to pay $6.5 billion in order to settle more that $9 billion worth of claims in the U.S. courts before Judge Griesa.
On Feb 29, the country reached agreement in principle with four major U.S. holdout creditors. So far Argentina has agreements from more than 85 percent of remaining holdouts.
With the settlements, Argentina should be able to come back to the international capital markets in mid April.
All the settlemens are remain subject to two conditions. First, the lifting of the Lock Law and the Sovereign Payment Law by the Congress of Argentina, and second, the lifting of the Injunction bu Judge Griesa.
The settlements also remain contingent on the Argentine Congress, cancelling laws that prevent repayment of the holdouts.
The country plans to sell three bonds for a total of $11.68 billion next month in order to pay the creditors in cash.
