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The first two decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a series of large-scale sovereign defaults and debt restructurings, in which sovereigns struggled to negotiate with recalcitrant bondholders, particularly hedge funds. Also, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 heralded a bleak financial outlook for many developing and emerging market countries, requiring sovereign debt restructuring in times of great macroeconomic uncertainty. Given the absence of a multilateral mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring equivalent to domestic corporate bankruptcy system, however, defaulted sovereigns often suffer from holdout litigation wrought by bondholders. This book proposes ways in which such legal actions could be regulated without the undue expense of bondholders' remedies by exploring the mechanism of balancing bondholder protection and respect for sovereign debt restructuring at various stages of litigation and arbitration proceedings.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Setting the scene; 2. The emerging framework for sovereign debt discourse; Part I. Regulation Through Contract and Litigation: 3. Sovereign immunities and other statutory mechanisms regulating holdout litigation; 4. Collective action clauses (CACs): Contractual regulation of holdout litigation; 5. The Pari Passu Clause: Regulating holdouts through injunctive relief; Part II. Regulation Through Treaty and Arbitration: 6. Jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals over sovereign debt disputes; 7. Admissibility of sovereign bond claims: Mass claims arbitration as a supplemental leverage over holdouts; 8. Checks and balances at the stage of merits; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Kei Nakajima is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Tokyo. Previously he worked at the International Court of Justice in The Hague as an Associate Legal Officer for several judges. Kei completed his two doctoral studies in Tokyo and Geneva.
