By Tyler Durden on 05/10/2012 11:35 -0400
Back on May 5th, before the shocking outcome of the Greek elections was known, and before anyone had even heard of the May 15th €430 million bond maturity, we explicitly warned that in the case of continued anarchy in the country (predicting the inability to form a gogvernment) that, “it is unlikely that Greece can persist under anarchy, especially with another critical event coming due: a €430 million payment on an international law bond that matures on May 15, and whose owners have held out from the PSI process (remember that? apparently not all has been swept under the rug). In fact we now know that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund could very well be the entity that will demand payment and when it doesn’t get it will promptly proceed to sue Greece.” Indeed, as explained, the bond is held by non-PSI holders, and it has international-law covenants, in other words by parties non compliant to the PSI agreement and whose claims must be satisfied unless total chaos were to break out in the sovereign arena! Which means that for all the rhetoric about the successful Greek PSI with acceptance rates of nearly 97%, it is one tiny issue that can derail the whole process and send Greece into an out of control default.
Recall what only Zero Hedge warned back in January: “while the bulk of the bonds, or what is now becoming obvious is the junior class, can be impaired with impunity (pardon the pun), it is the UK-law, or the non-domestic indenture, bonds, which are the de facto fulcrum security. And since the notional outstanding here is tiny, it is quite easy to build up a blocking stake in the bonds and to obtain full control of the process” It appears that more have grasped this outcome, and now 5 days ahead of D-Day are once again dumping all exposure to the bond which some other hedge funds called a “No-Brainer” and the “Trade of the Year.”
First: here is what Bloomberg followed up with a few days after our post:
Read the rest of the article here: http://bit.ly/K20vlT
