Tuesday 27 January 2015, 6.30-8.00pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Felix Salmon
Chair: Professor Ken Shadlen
Sovereigns, Vultures & Ignoble Cowardice
The prominent financial journalist, Felix Salmon, visited LSE in January 2015 to talk about ‘Sovereigns, Vultures and Ignoble Cowardice’.
Felix specialises in sovereign debt restructure, with particular emphasis on South America, which formed the basis of his lecture.
He discussed the seminal problems of sovereigns and ownership, and of common routes out of default, before unveiling the incident that uprooted the world of sovereign debt: the Argentine Crisis of 2001.
Billionaire Paul Singer ‘dropped a thermonuclear device’ on the financial system, Felix suggested, as an American court issued a sui generis injunction which inhibited the routes for repayment. The injunction decreed that bondholders could not be paid until Elliott Associates had been paid in full.
Argentina’s idealist principles of avoiding default weakened their position, he argued, while a country like Ecuador proved a useful contrast, by tackling its own default more aggressively and pragmatically.
Overall, the fundamental legal principles that contain and stabilise sovereign debt were uprooted once it became clear that unpredictable forces (such as American judges) could contrive ‘atrocious jurisprudence’ to appease their own benefactors.
Images of the evening can be found below, while a podcast of the event is available to view or download here|.