Argentina will tell the mediator brokering debt negotiations with US investment firms suing the country over unpaid debt that it wants to resolve the decade-long legal battle, President Mauricio Macri said yesterday.
Talks between Argentina, which is in default on some sovereign bonds, and US hedge funds led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management are set to resume today.
“We don’t want to remain listed as a defaulter, we want to resolve all outstanding issues,” Macri told a news conference.
Macri took office on December 10 after ousting the leftist government of President Cristina Fernandez, who refused to settle with the funds that spurned debt restructurings following Argentina’s record $100bn default in 2002.
Macri said he wants Daniel Pollack, who was appointed by a New York court to mediate an  accord between Argentina and a group of bondholders led by Singer, to help facilitate a “reasonable deal”. Finance Secretary Luis Caputo will meet with Pollack and representatives of the holdout creditors in New York today.
Macri who advocates free-market policies said Argentina would tell mediator Pollack that the change in government had brought a “shift in the vision that we Argentines have toward our debt.”
Negotiations between the funds and Fernandez collapsed in July 2014, leading Argentina to fall back into default. Fernandez denigrated the holdouts as “vultures” bent on picking on the carcass of the country’s earlier monster default.
Macri said the stance taken by de Kirchner “wasn’t rational” and that he hoped Pollack would help the two parties find common ground.
While Argentina managed to restructure about 93% of its debt by imposing a 70% discount on creditors, Singer’s Elliott Management and other bondholders refused the offer and sued in court for better terms. Creditors have said they would accept repayment in bonds.
Earlier on Monday Argentina newspaper La Nacion quoted the country’s cabinet chief as saying the government does not expect to make an offer to US hedge funds.
“We don’t plan to make an offer,” Cabinet chief Marcos Pena told La Nacion. “This is a preliminary conversation.”
Macri faces a hard currency crunch and needs to resolve the decade-long legal battle to restore investor confidence and regain access to global credit markets. But he has promised Argentines he will haggle hard.
“All our problems shouldn’t rush us into making concrete advances,” Pena was quoted as saying.