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The "vulture" lawyer who returns to the charge against Argentina

2020-02-16T23:11:48.236Z


It was he who personally approached the Freedom Frigate to seize it in October 2012. The Argentine case made him famous and earned him prizes. It now represents a group of 20 funds that negotiate the debt with the Government.


Laura Garcia

02/16/2020 - 19:11

  • Clarín.com
  • Economy
  • Economy

"I never felt that I was physically at risk. But when I had to hand in my passport, I recognized that it definitely crossed my mind that I might not get it back, or that at least it would not be so easy."

The anecdote is by Dennis Hranitzky and almost made him a legend. He recounts the moment when he personally approached the Argentine Freedom Frigate, when he landed in Ghana that October 2012.

It is that Dennis Hranitzky was the lawyer of the arch-enemy of the "holdout saga", Paul Singer, owner of Elliott Management, in that inexhaustible bracelet with Argentina that catapulted him to fame in matters of sovereign restructuring.

Hranitzky remembers that he was nervous. He had to deliver his document to the captain as a condition to board and be able to formally inform him that the ship was being seized. One of the hardest and most humiliating blows in this legal battle that lasted 15 years.

The case earned the law firm he worked for then, Dechert, nothing less than recognition as "Global Dispute of the Year" by the prestigious magazine The American Lawyer in 2016. In that opaque world, is equivalent to touching the sky in the hands.

It is not uncommon that just a few days ago, on January 21, Hranitzky decided to leave Dechert after 13 years to move with almost his entire team to another law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

The firm offered to put together a whole new area to do what it knows best: Sovereign Litigation, that is, to take the states in default to the courts so that they end up paying everything. A hierarchy did not recognize his former employer.

It must also be said that it must not have been easy to deal with billionaire Paul Singer as a client. They have, in any case, a point in common: both received from lawyers at Harvard.

In fact, Singer, who grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, exercised seven years on Wall Street until he got tired. He began to invest in shares with his father, a pharmacist. "He and I found almost every possible way to lose money," he once said in an interview.

Now Hranitzky emerges from the shadows and suddenly becomes a new player on the national restructuring board. It is that the veteran lawyer decided to represent a group of creditors that is being organized for a few months and that already reach 20 funds.

This was reported by Bloomberg, to whom Hranitzky said: "It would be a mistake to see too much the fact that the group had hired me, given my story litigating on behalf of Elliott" His fame precedes him, it's true.

According to Bloomberg, these creditors concentrate on assets that were part of the country's debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010, as they have collective action clauses that establish that holders of only one third of the principal amount of a single bond could veto any I agree they don't endorse.

Even so, his lawyer said that bondholders claim to be "completely constructive" in the restructuring process. A statement that generates at least some suspicion. The group is headed by Monarch, HBK Capital Management, Cyrus Capital Partners LP and VR Capital Group Ltd. as members of the steering committee.

There are other fronts agglutinating and preparing for less constructive talks than desired. This is the case of two Wall Street monsters, BlackStone and Fidelity, among the six main holders of Argentine debt.

White & Case LLP is the legal advisor, with Ian Clark in charge, another restructuring advisor with a lot of experience on his back who has already visited even Buenos Aires to talk with the Government.

But for Hranitzky it will be different. Get to know Cristina well. Know the logic of Kirchnerism. And at this point hardly scare easy. Your clients will not be a shark like Singer. But they can clearly derail the thing.


Source: clarin

All business articles on 2020-02-16

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