Sovereign Defaults Before Domestic Courts

In this new book, Hayk Kupelyants examines sovereign debt litigation before the English and New York courts. The book sets out parties' litigation choices at various stages of proceedings and provides the legal background against which parties to a sovereign bond may wish to negotiate. The book offers an exhaustive account of litigation tactics available to bondholders and sovereign debtors alike. The book is unique in the breadth of its coverage. It examines issues of jurisdiction and choice of law at the preliminary stages of litigation, substantive challenges of various sorts to sovereign debt restructurings and to the repayment of bonds on merits, and enforcement of final judgments against the state and its assets in the post-judgment phase. This is a systematic explanation and critical evaluation of a difficult area of law, with regard to the current state of the law and key provisions of sovereign bond documents.

Introduction 1: Theoretical Underpinnings of Sovereign Debt 2: Contractual Background of Sovereign Debt Litigation 3: Jurisdiction and Cognate Matters 4: Governing Law of Sovereign Bonds 5: Unilateral Modification of Sovereign Domestic-Law Bonds 6: Defences to Repayment 7: A Taxonomy of Challenges to Sovereign Debt Restructurings 8: Enforcement of Sovereign Debt