Laura Garcia
02/19/2020 - 11:54
- Clarín.com
- Economy
- Economy
Monarch The name says little and nothing to an Argentine on foot. But the financial underworld of funds interested in troubled debt is, after all, neither as big nor intricate.
Monarch Alternative Fund is the "vulture fund" that heads the most aggressive of the groups of creditors that have so far agglutinated as a reaction to the Argentine restructuring. It was created in 2002 by three experts on this subject who met working for the American investment bank Lazard Frères , who won the tender as a restructuring advisor headed by Roberto Lavagna in February 2003, exactly 17 years ago. Lazard Frères is also one of those who sounds today among the candidates who line up to advise officials in this new negotiation.
Michael Weinstock , Chief Executive Officer of Monarch, was Managing Director of Lazard, a firm that had joined 10 years ago to reinforce the investigation into debt in distress , a term used in jargon to refer to debt which is on the verge of default.
For 1998, Institutional Investor magazine devoted his team in Lazard as the number one ranking in the category. Laurels celebrated in the financial elite. The founding trio of Monarch is completed with Andrew Herenstein and Christopher Santana . All of the same suit.
It is they who hired veteran Paul Singer lawyer, Dennis Hranitzky, to fight a new legal battle with Argentina, in case another round in court is necessary. When working for Singer's Vulture Fund, Elliot Management, Hranitzky managed to seize the Freedom Frigate in a port of Ghana in 2012, in full battle with the funds that had been left with the default papers.
Other groups that today have titles that the Government wants to restructure have already contacted Monarch. One of them is BlackStone , the world's largest fund, with US $ 570,000 million under management between different asset classes. What a colossus is said. Another is Fidelity , which manages US $ 2460 million and is the fund that blocked the attempt of Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof to kick his expiration.
In turn, Monarch Alternative Capital manages assets for about US $ 4.6 billion and recognizes and says that its mission is to focus on "opportunistic" investors. It has 69 employees, 23 specialized in investors, and offices in New York and London.
Many of his interests are concentrated in Puerto Rico, and they have, strangely, a note of glamor . There he acquired, for example, in 2019 a hotel come less to make it the ultra-luxurious Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve Puerto Rico, which has just been opened after a multi-million dollar renovation.
He was also one of the strongest creditors in the default of Puerto Rico, which a few days ago just announced an agreement to remove the Caribbean island from the well under US mandate after almost five years of litigation.
The final agreement in Puerto Rico includes more cash for creditors and more attractive bonds (with terms of 20 years instead of 30) but erases US $ 24,000 million of the debt, according to the Financial Times.
The one who pressed there until the last moment and was the hardest player was, precisely, another acquaintance of Argentina, the Aurelius fund. That fund was an opponent of the State in times of default but also in more recent lawsuits. It is already said: in this world where the opportunity is sought in the weak, there are not so many and almost everyone knows each other.
