Clauses & Controversies

Nov 30 2024 147 ep. 44 mins 46
Clauses & Controversies Podcast artwork

Clauses and Controversies: A Podcast about International Finance, Contract Clauses and the Controversies Surrounding These Clauses

  Education
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Ep 147 ft. Paul Stephan

Nov 30 2024 47 mins  
YPF and Argentina’s Contributions to International Law Argentina owes over $16 billion in connection with its nationalization of state oil company YPF. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York is considering whether to order Argentina to hand over its shares in YPF — technically located outside the United States — to pay part of the judgment. Can it do that? Pau

Ep 146 ft. Mitu & Mark

Nov 04 2024 37 mins  
The Penalty Doctrine in Contract Law We've never been fans of the contract law rule against penalties. Why can't parties (sophisticated ones at least) agree to suffer a penalty in the event of breach? We’d ordinarily avoid this topic, because the doctrine makes little sense and the issue doesn’t come up much in the sovereign debt world. But recently, a couple of sovereign rest

Ep 145 ft. Mitu & Mark

Oct 07 2024 30 mins  
A New Competition For Law (and Jurisdiction)? Jurisdictions famously compete for businesses to use their corporate law. Less discussed is the competition for having one’s law chosen to govern contracts. But it happens. Sovereign debt lawyers in England and New York can, if they have a few drinks in them, can be quite entertaining in their sniping at each other about whether Engl

Ep 144 ft. Nate Oman

Sep 30 2024 35 mins  
An Execution Sale is Not a Receivership. (Right?) Creditors of Venezuela and PDVSA, its state oil company, have forced an execution sale of PDVSA's only US asset – which happens to be the ultimate parent company of CITGO. The federal judge overseeing the process has tried to keep things orderly, but the inter-creditor fighting is getting juicy. Some lower priority creditors have

Ep 143 ft. Mitu & Mark

Sep 23 2024 36 mins  
Hamilton Bank v. Sri Lanka: What the $@#$ ? Accusations that Hamilton Bank is a giant fraudster stealing depositor funds, bizarro requests from Hamilton to the court that other creditors be constrained in using their contract rights against it, an amicus intervention in the case to say nothing at all . . . and on and on. This case gets more and more bizarre, which makes us suspect

Ep 142 ft. Theo Maret

Sep 09 2024 40 mins  
Zambia’s Restructuring: A Post-Mortem Zambia’s recently concluded restructuring seemed to drag on forever, debilitated by conflicts among the various creditor groups. Why did these different groups think the others were being unreasonable in their demands? And what can we learn from what happened? Our guest is one of the keenest observers in the sovereign debt world, who follo

Ep 141 ft. Mitu & Mark

Sep 02 2024 36 mins  
The Champerty Show Ah, Champerty. Perpetual runner-up, to the doctrine of consideration, in the Stupidest Legal Rule pageant. Why do directly (e.g., via the abuse of process claim) what you can do clumsily and indirectly (by limiting an injured party’s access to finance)? But what do we know? Actually, not much. We do know that Venezuela/PDVSA won a very interesting Champerty ca

Ep 140 ft. Zohra Ahmed

Aug 26 2024 36 mins  
IMF Rescues Pakistan From the Brink of Default (Again) Pakistan looks to be in the process of finalizing yet another IMF program. Yet again, it has been rescued from the brink of default with a bailout justified by some heroic assumptions about how a state of sustainability will magically materialize. Why? Our guest, Zohra Ahmed, of Boston University Law School, has a theory: that

Ep 139 ft. Oona Hathaway

Aug 19 2024 44 mins  
A Better Way to Freeze (and Seize?) Russian Assets? Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, there has been talk of what international law doctrines might be utilized to induce Russia to back off. One of those doctrines that has been whispered about is now, thanks to a wonderful new article by our guest, international law guru and Yale Law professor, Oona Hathaway, is that of C

Ep 138 ft. Randle DeFalco

Aug 12 2024 39 mins  
Cambodia’s Debts to the US: How “Dirty” Are They? Roughly a half century ago, in the 1970s, the US infamously bombed Cambodia. Less known is that the US, through a “Food for Peace” program, made a series of loans to the somewhat dodgy government of General Lon Nol. The loans were made, at least in part, to assist Cambodians displaced by the bombings. Fast forward a few d